This compelled me to Google how ferns reproduce…which brought me to an /r/botany thread…
I have more questions now than when I started.
Illegible text /sarcasm
They airdrop baby parts that grow into genitals to have sex with themselves to make themselves, if I recall correctly.
That’s basically correct, yes! The baby parts are the gametophytes and they then use their male and female parts to produce a new zygote, which will grow into a sporophyte. This sporophyte is what we know as a fern. It will produce and finally release many many spores, which are the “airdrop baby parts”.
It’s actually closer to firing fully formed babies out of a cannon and hoping they land close enough to each other to have sex and then their kid grows into a fern again
IIRC is my most reliable source of 2026
Sometimes I click the links AI gives back as source and usually the website has nothing to do with the information I’m given.
