Fern seed
The “seed” of ferns
- Known today as
- The spores of ferns, mistaken for seed.
- Kind
- Plant, in 1 older authority
- Constituents
- spores, filicin
- Earliest authority here
- Pliny (AD 23/24–79)
Revised October 1, 2026: An older authority added from a text read in full. Version 1, first published September 25, 2026.
Fern seed: what was it used for?
None in medicine; a charm.
Fern seed: what does modern science say?
Ferns reproduce by spores, not seeds, which is why the “seed” seemed invisible.
Pharmacognosy & Toxicology
- Constituents
- Mechanism
- There is no seed: ferns reproduce by spores, invisible to the eye on the frond’s underside, and the invisible seed that gave invisibility was an inference from a plant that seemed to seed unseen. The spores are inert.
- Toxic dose
- None.
- Standing
- A charm; the fern that has a pharmacology is the male fern, whose rhizome was the taenicide of the pharmacopoeias until the 1950s.
- Thiselton-Dyer, T. F. (1889). The Folk-lore of Plants, ch. 10. Verified against its record · doi:10.1086/274955
Constituent names open the compound’s record at PubChem, and “ChEMBL” beside a name opens its record at ChEMBL, the European Bioinformatics Institute’s database of bioactive molecules. Where a mechanism line was checked against ChEMBL (ChEMBL 37, read 1 October 2026), the check is shown with the measured value and its source paper, or says plainly that nothing has been measured. Doses are as the references give them, for description only; this is not medical advice. Each source carries the result of its check against Crossref, PubMed, or the authority’s page: see Verification.
Fern seed: what lore surrounds it?
Gathered on St. John’s Eve, it was held to make its bearer invisible: “we have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible.”
Fern seed: what did the older authorities say?
- Pliny
- Pliny knows the polypody fern as “filicula,” which “bears some resemblance to fern.” Its fibrous root, “of a grass green colour within, about the thickness of the little finger, and covered with cavernous suckers like those on the arms of the polypus,” is steeped in water or sprinkled on cabbage, beet, mallows or salt meat, or boiled with pap “as a gentle aperient for the bowels.” Dried and powdered and applied to the nostrils “it cauterizes polypus of the nose.” And he records the point that later fern-seed lore turned to magic: “It has neither seed nor flower.”
Sources
- Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1 II.1. Verified against its record · doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198123644.book.1
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History 26.37, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library. Primary text
Verification
- Checked
- October 1, 2026
- Passes
- Every sentence read against its sources, in the pass over the remaining 343 entries
- The Standing line checked against the authority it names (EMA, WHO, FDA, CITES, Commission E)
- Every dated or regulatory claim checked by category across the database
- Each quotation from the older authorities checked word for word against the text, read in full
- Sources
- 3 cited: 2 verified against its record, 1 primary text.
- Corrections
- None were needed.
What was checked, how, and what was found is set out on the Verification page. A checked source is one whose record was found; it does not make the entry medical advice.
Cite This Entry
Version 1 · first published September 25, 2026 · last revised October 1, 2026
- Chicago
“Fern seed.” In Materia Medica, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1. The Thinking Press, 2026–. Last modified October 1, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/fern-seed.
- MLA
“Fern seed.” Materia Medica, edited by B. C. P. Statema, version 1, The Thinking Press, 1 Oct. 2026, thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/fern-seed. Accessed 8 Oct. 2026.
- APA
Fern seed. (2026, October 1). In B. C. P. Statema (Ed.), Materia medica (Version 1). The Thinking Press. Retrieved October 8, 2026, from https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/fern-seed
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See Also
Sharing spores
Also in Pliny the Elder
Fig in Pliny the Elder · Fennel in Pliny the Elder · Ginger in Pliny the Elder · Eryngo in Pliny the Elder · everything Pliny the Elder names →
Drawing on the same sources: Shakespeare, Thiselton-Dyer
Nearby in the alphabet
Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium) · False morel (reddish-brown spring mushroom of conifer woods) · The fig hand (made as a gesture or carved as a charm) · Fairy ring champignon (A small tan mushroom that grows in rings on lawns and pasture) · Fly agaric (white-spotted toadstool of fairy tales, of birch and pine woods) · Eyebright (Euphrasia officinalis and relatives)
Historical description, not medical advice.