inside a fern

... inside a very large fern, in fact (morning walk).  I love all the different varieties of fronds and curls that ferns come in.  So it was sad, the other day - answering a question after a talk that I gave on my current research - to admit that I wasn't going to be writing about ferns - beyond a paragraph or two, anyway - since really, there's a fair enough amount of historically oriented fern scholarship with which to be trotting along ...