A new scientific discovery identifies the fern Cyathea rojasiana and its ability to transform dead fronds into roots

The Quebrada Chorro Forest, in western Panama, has revealed an interesting secret of nature: the fern Chiathea rogasiana, when faced with the hardships of waterlogged soil with low nutrient content, adopts a unique strategy to survive.

Surprisingly, this kind of… Fern They turn their dead leaves into roots, a phenomenon recently discovered during an expedition led by tropical forest ecologist James Dalling of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Source: Sciencenews.org

An unexpected discovery in Quebrada Chorro

In 2019, during an expedition to study how the roots of the tropical conifer Podocarpus absorb nutrients, Dalling and his team of researchers came across dense vegetation of the fern Cyathea rojasiana.

As they were trying to move the dead fronds away from the fern, they realized… Leaves It was rooted in the ground. Daling emphasizes the luck that contributed to the discovery, noting that they would have ignored this phenomenon if they had not been digging in the ground at the time.

A unique adaptation of Cyathea rojasiana

Cyathea ferns are known to maintain a kind of skirt of dead fronds around their trunks, perhaps as a defense against vines or to insulate the fern from cold temperatures.

The peculiarity of C. rojasiana lies in the fact that it is relatively short compared to other ferns, and when its leaves die and fall, they touch the ground.

Daling suggests that the fern uses these fallen leaves to seek out pockets of nutrients, thus avoiding investing resources in creating new roots from scratch.

Convert dead leaves into functional roots

Dalling's team excavated some leafy roots, then returned to the lab and planted them in pots containing a stable form of nitrogen called nitrogen-15.

Further dissection of the roots showed that they had absorbed nutrients, indicating that the structures function effectively as roots.

This phenomenon is unique, as C. rojasiana is the only known plant in the world that revives its dead leaves as roots.

Comparison with other properties of nature

Although many plants exhibit strange behaviors with leaves or roots, such as the walking fern from the United States, which reproduces by generating new plants at the tips of its leaves, C. rojasiana's ability is truly unique.

Other discoveries in the Quebrada Chorro Forest, such as the climbing roots of Clusia plants, highlight the diversity of strategies that plants adopt to survive in difficult environments.

Feedback and next steps in research

Botanists and fern experts such as Erin Siegel of the University of New Hampshire and Robin Moran, formerly of the New York Botanical Garden, have expressed surprise and amazement at the discovery.

Daling plans to collaborate with a plant anatomist to better understand the structure of leaf roots and investigate the presence of mycorrhizal fungi, which play a crucial role in the uptake of nutrients by the roots of some plants. “I'm really curious now,” Dalling says. “Is there a fungus on those leafy roots?”