Cinnamon fern spore head

The fiddlehead year is rapidly coming to an end, as most of the local ferns have finished unrolling their fronds from structures that resemble the curled heads of violins, violas, and other similar stringed instruments. And with that process done, many species are engaged in another kind of important business: crafting the next generation. Ferns are ancient plants that predate the "invention" of seeds. Instead, ferns reproduce by making tiny asexual reproductive units called spores that are carried by wind and water. It's a dicey business and most of the spores land in inopportune places. But the ones that get lucky soon make a small and rarely seen sexual plantlet called a prothallus, and if this succeeds in getting fertilized by a like-minded, nearby prothallus—again, luck plays a big role in this game—the result is a plant we'd recognize as a fern. I'm honing my skills at learning all the local species, but this one I know. It's a Cinnamon Fern, a very common species around here, and what it's doing this month is making a separate spore carrier filled with millions of potential members of the Osmunda cinnomomea clan. Too bad the intriguing bit of plant architecture doesn't create real cinnamon.