Turning Toward Fern Light

On our way to the Winter Solstice

© Bryan Pfeiffer

NOW BEGINS the home stretch in our journey toward the light. Here in the north, where winter has made itself comfortable, the solstice on December 21 is a destination — a promise in darkness, when the daylight ever-so-slowly begins its return.

Until then, there is much to discover along the snowy paths: white owls, iconoclastic insects, tiny buds, big ideas. (More on those below.) But this week I bring you hope in the prosaic, something most of us pass by in the frozen woods: a lacy fern, crimped and crumpled, green and thriving through winter.

To be sure, you will easily find other green in the ice and snow: the spruce and fir, the moss and liverwort. But even as so much of the north woods has now withered and fallen to earth, a few of the wood ferns (in the genus Dryopteris) carry on. The most common for many of us is Intermediate Wood Fern (Dryopteris intermedia).

For as long as I can remember, I myself have carried on among these elegant ferns, accepting as axiomatic their defiant winter greenery. But now, perhaps because it’s been a rough autumn, I’m seeing them in new light. (This might say more about me than the ferns.) What I’ve come to admire about Intermediate Wood Fern is something I cannot see.

There is much to be said this year about plant “intelligence,” owing in large part to the publication, mostly to high praise, of “The Light Eaters” by Zoë Schlanger. A nimble and smart writer, Schlanger negotiates and explains the rugged intellectual terrain of how plants might communicate with one another, recognize their relatives, or even hear and see and hold memories. Schlanger is purposeful in her anthropomorphizing, as are the botanists she interviews.

I need not cover that terrain here, even as I enjoyed and learned from the book. Grounds for caution — and a waypoint for Schlanger — is the 1973 book “The Secret Life of Plants,” which posited that plants were sentient enough to read minds, experience emotion, and favor classical music over rock and roll. Even though “The Secret Life of Plants” would eventually be undermined by its employing some lousy science, the book did inspire one of the all-time-great botany quotes, which itself inspired Schlanger’s book title.

“Why would a plant care about Mozart?” said botanist Tim Plowman when asked about “The Secret Life of Plants.” “And even if it did, why should that impress us? They can eat light, isn’t that enough?”

Regardless of what’s going on in the secret lives of my Intermediate Wood Ferns, they are indeed eating light. In temperatures above freezing, the ferns, half-buried in snow, take in carbon dioxide and water, and by the light of day manufacture oxygen and sugars that allow plants to function and grow. We know it as photosynthesis. It’s been happening in various forms for about 3 billion years. And it’s the reason you’re alive.

Well, there are a zillion reasons you yourself are alive — and why you are who you are. But here on land, about 500 million years ago, photosynthesis in early terrestrial plants began to suck even more carbon dioxide from the air and generate oxygen, fostering climate and environment that led to a multitude of living things, not the least of which are primates who wage wars, create music, eat junk food, and understand photosynthesis. And yet even as we ourselves, like the ferns, can now make energy from the sun, we nonetheless can’t seem to elect leaders willing to stop burning things, warming the planet, and otherwise making a mess of the Earth.

So, on these short days, on my way to the solstice, and by way of grace and respite, I am in awe among Intermediate Wood Ferns. There in the snow, bent and broken like some of us, the ferns take in the scarce light of winter and prepare for rebirth and growth during longer, brighter days ahead.

They can eat light, isn’t that enough?

Yeah, it’s enough.

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Subscriber Updates

As we together approach the solstice and the two-year anniversary of Chasing Nature, here are a few wild reminders and some news about online gatherings I’ll be hosting for paying subscribers.

• Snowy Owl Update — As I reported earlier, Snowy Owls have settled in nicely in good numbers across the northeastern and midwestern U.S. My offer stands to paying subscribers: If you live in the Northeast of Midwest, send me an email and I’ll see if I might direct you to one of those owls.

• Winter Moths — On the shortest day of the year, even in the cold, many of you might find moths celebrating the solstice by making more moths. I wrote a year ago why this can be so — a remarkable case of female sacrifice.

• Eroticism Among Winter Buds — Continuing the carnal theme, here’s a short post about naked buds and Georgia O'Keeffe's flower portraits.

Subscriber Meets

I’ve learned that many paying subscribers don’t necessarily seek extra benefits, but instead seek to recognize and support the work that goes into Chasing Nature. For that I am ever grateful. Still, I do intend to improve upon the Go Wild suite of benefits for the good folks who make all this possible. Remember, dear patrons, you have access (in our Classroom) to my Practical Nature Photography seminar and to lectures on gull identification (yeah, gulls — they’ll change your life) and butterflies. I hope to add more lectures in 2025. Paying subscribers also get exclusive Substack Chats.

But let us also meet online. Although these haven’t been well-attended in the past, I’m game for new ideas. We can cover bird life, insect life, the writing life, or other ideas. But for starters, in early January, I’ll host a video chat — an “Ask Me Anything,” as they’re called — about cameras (including our phones) and nature photography for ordinary people (and extraordinary people like you). After all, most of us now pack a camera in our pocket. So let’s see what we might “expose” together. Watch for details soon. Thanks!

One final botany postscript: There are indeed other evergreen ferns out there, including the classic leathery polypody ferns (in the genus Polypodium) and the common Polystichum acrostichoides (whose leaflets resemble green Christmas stockings). Marginal Wood Fern (Dryopteris marginalis) is another robust green fern in winter here in North America. But these aren’t as lacy as Intermediate Wood Fern or, for that matter, similar evergreen Dryopteris species in the U.K. and Europe.

© Bryan Pfeiffer