If you ever watch a duck float across a pond, gobbling up the vegetation coating the surface, that bird is way ahead of its time. The buoyant greenery is azolla, a tiny fern that grows like crazy, ...

Kathleen Pryer is professor of biology at Duke University and president of the American Fern Society. Fifty million years ago, the Earth was so warm that turtles and alligators thrived in lush forests ...

What it’s about: That time that ferns completely upended all life on Earth. Azolla is a freshwater fern often used as fertilizer in rice paddies, but 49 million years ago, it spread so far, and ...