Oaxaca Journal, Oliver Sacks

Long after the sexuality of flowering plants was recognised, the reproduction of ferns remained a mystery. It was believed, Robbin told me, that ferns had seeds—how else could they reproduce?—but since no-one could see these, they assumed an odd and almost magical status. Invisible themselves, they were thought to confer invisibility on others: "We have receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible," says one of Falstaff's henchmen in Henry IV. The great Linnaeus himself, in the eighteenth century, did not know how ferns reproduced, and coined the term cryptograms to denote the hiddenness, the mystery, of their reproduction. It was only in the middle of the nineteenth century that it was discovered that in addition to the familiar fern plant with its spore-bearing fronds, the sporophte, there also existed a tiny heart-shaped plant, very easily overlooked, and that it was this, the gametophyte, which bore the actual sex organs.

I read this book for the ferns, but was pleased to find lots of diversions in history, culture, food, arts, other types of botany, interpersonal relations, travel, science and all the other topics that make Oliver Sacks such an interesting writer. Recommended (US link) — although mostly recommended to fern enthusiasts.

Other posts about Oliver Sacks here.