Pip Squire finds poetry, beauty and magic in fern names.
Many species of fern have beautiful names. Open a book about ferns and you can recite the contents like a poem, or a spell: filmy ferns, maiden hair, bracken, parsley fern, heart fern, spleenwort, hart’s-tongue, goodyear, black fern, shield fern, buckler fern, polypody, royal fern, adder’s-tongue, moonwort, pillwort, horsetail…
Even if you don’t know what a particular species looks like, its name conjures an idea, paints a portrait in your mind, and strengthens its magical associations. Think of the luminous way moonwort, for example (also known as moonfern, lunary, unshoe-the-horse, shoeless horse) slips off the tongue. Is it any wonder that alchemists once believed it capable of turning mercury into silver?
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As told to the editor.
An artist based in Devon and Cornwall, Pip Squire is a colour enthusiast, and a lover of the stories contained in plants, people and animals.