Pip Squire sprinkles a handful of fern seed over the summer solstice.
Perhaps it is in the mythic idea of fern seed that we find the origins of fairy dust. Throughout literature and folk tale of old, the never-seen seeds of ferns are regarded as a magical substance. In some instances they are used to pay people, and in others they are kept in a pocket for protection. When applied, fern seed may grant powers of treasure-finding, love, or, as in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I, invisibility (We have the receipt of fern seed says Gadshill, we walk invisible).
One English myth teaches that to catch the fern seed, you lay twelve pewter plates beneath a fern, and whilst you won’t see the plant bloom, the next morning it will have flowered and dropped its single golden seed. The seed, having sunk through eleven of the pewter plates, will land on the twelfth.
Some tellings have it that ferns’ flowers are brilliant blue, while others say the flower is bright red, and will light the whole woods, only for the devil to come and snatch it for himself. The window for bloom and seed-harvest was thought to occur only on the solstice, or Midsummer’s Eve — some time between now and the 24th of June, depending on who, where and when you ask. Much like its seed, the fern’s elusive flower was sought to bring wealth, or to prove one’s devotion to their lover.
I just love all of this imagery, these anxious ideas about what is hidden from us. Ferns are all around us, and yet they’re so elusive, so unknowable. We have historically harboured so much desire for something which is simultaneously so commonplace that it often goes unnoticed.
Although we now understand that ferns reproduce via spore — producing neither seed nor flower — there is still something to be said for keeping these strong, ancient beings close by. A little of their magic may yet rub off — even if we can’t see it.
Photo: Pip Squire
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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.