Miscellaneous - Sounds Wild
Bracken Fern

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Bracken ferns

On a beautiful spring day, a leafy green bracken fern has unfurled its fiddleheads into graceful, spreading fronds. This fern is lying at the base of an avalanche slope. Months earlier, a snowslide tore the basketball-size rootwad loose and pushed it downhill. The hardy plant will thrive here – bracken fern is an opportunistic pioneer plant which can quickly colonize a new landscape.

The familiar bracken fern is the most widespread fern on earth. Found in temperate and subtropical regions on every continent except Antarctica, it is tolerant of acidic soils and thrives in the Southeast Alaska rainforest.

Bracken is the word for fern in Norse, Swedish and Danish. In the past, bracken fern was gathered as a food and used in tanning, and soap and glass making. Bracken fronds were valued as animal bedding, and they break down into a rich mulch that was used as fertilizer.

While fiddleheads were eaten by many cultures, it’s now known that bracken ferns contain the carcinogenic compound ptaquiloside. Cooking degenerates the compound, but consumption is now not recommended. Bracken ferns also has two other interesting compounds that protect it from being eaten - insect hormones which trigger uncontrollable, repeated molting that kills insects that consume the lush greens. Bracken is currently under investigation as a possible source of new insecticides.