Bracken

[pierre girard]

Would someone do me a favour and post a photo of bracken. It gets talked about quite a bit, but I don't know what it is. We have something over here called bracken fern, but someone was talking about eating it, so that can't be it. While we have some types of ferns that are edible in the spring, bracken fern isn't one of them.

 

[British Red]

Here you go Pierre. Its much greener now. It gets to about 6 - 8 foot high in fertile areas. Only the young tips can be eaten (and you have to be hungry)

Red

 

[pierre girard]

Ah, it is a fern. Six to eight foot high? That is really high - much higher than the local stuff grows.

You sure that is bracken fern? The local bracken fern has leaves (fronds) that are not opposing. Seems like the one plant I can see clearly in the photo has opposing fronds. I have a bunch of it on my property, growing along the road.

If I recall correctly, bracken is poisonous and should not be eaten - causes cancer, maybe. It is also known (I think) as "rattlesnake fern." The only local type that can be eaten is ostritch fern - which is more delicate and has opposing fronds. The fiddleheads on ostritch fern can be eaten until they are about four (maybe six) inches high. Seems like I remember bracken fern fiddleheads are real fuzzy too. Tried Bracken fiddleheads when I was a kid. Made me sick.

None of this should be taken as hard and fast rules - just local knowledge - maybe old wives tales. Best to read up on it.

PG

 

[Nemisis]

Hi Pierre a little more about bracken here but a good site with stuff on animals,plants and trees in the uk thought it might be of interest http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/wildbritain/look_around/plants/heathland.shtml
Dave.

 

[British Red]

Ah, it is a fern. Six to eight foot high? That is really high - much higher than the local stuff grows.

You sure that is bracken fern? Seems like the one plant I can see clearly in the photo has opposing fronds.
PG

Yep I'm sure Pierre - it does have flat opposing fronds and grows from fiddleheads. One of our groups favourite haunts has bracken that is way over "man" height. I wouldn't eat it but it makes great thatch and bedding - and no-one minds you cutting it by the ton!

Red

 

[Ketchup]

Pteridium aquilinum. In Latin (and in my language) its name translates as "eagle fern", because if you cut the base of a frond, the section bears a figure vaguely resembling an imperial eagle (two-headed)

 

[British Red]

I was sent a reminder of the bracken height at one of our group meets today....does this illustrate the height Pierre ?

Red

 

[BobFromHolland]

I've got bad memories of this fern. At a weekend walk with some friends I started a fire (safely!!) and used dead bracken as a tinder. But since the stuff burned so quickly I ran over to were it was standing, grabbed two good handfulls of the stems and gave them a hard jank in order to pull them from the ground.
that wasn't really what happened, 'cause these buggers were anchored quite firmly in the ground and I ended up cutting my hands and three fingers badly.
The stems had split and applied some nasty paper-cut type slices in me :yikes:
That reminded me that we had forgotten the medical kit in the car, so I had to improvise with toilet paper and gaffer tape.


Lessons learned:
1- don't jank on dead bracken
2- bring medical kit
3- toilet paper and gaffer tape have proven their worth .. again..

Bob

 

[Mantic]

For a mass of images, go to google.com and do an image search under with the word 'bracken'.

 

[JonnyP]

Bracken is great stuff.............We as kids used to make bracken shelters, just by leaning the stuff against itself, oh such memories...................Jon

 

[Tor helge]

Bracken grows almost everywhere up here, but I`ve only heard about eating one kind of them, a fern we call Strutsevinge (Matteuccia Struthiopteris).
The "eaters" is mostly americans living in Norway. I`ve never heard of norwegian eating ferns, but Strutsevinge was fed to the livestock in earlier times.

Tor

 

[leon-b]

hi we have loads of bracken round here could some one please tell me some uses it has

 

[torjusg]

Doesn't ferns contain a carcinogenous substance, making it dangerous to eat in quantity?

Torjus Gaaren

 

[Wayne]

you can eat the young shoots. Boiled it tastes like asparagus. However it may be a carcinogen. It's sold as food in tins in Japan.

The spores as also said to cause cancer. Then again everything is bad for you these days.

 

[BOD]

Is this "bracken fern" the same as the one with the same name which grows in Australia?

It certainly looks the same and one can eat the young tips but I have been told that these have been recently implicated in stomach cancer apparently due to the little hairs on the tips.

 

[Stuart]

as far as I am away you can eat the 'fiddle heads' (young coiled section at the top) of ferns, but if they are hairy you should draw the head though your hand to remove the hairs or possibly singe them off over a fire.

 

[BOD]

Yes, fiddlehead ferns are constantly eaten by almost all the people of Borneo as you know.

I was told about the stomach cancer association by both Bob Cooper and his ethno botanist assistant Bob Hunter.

I wonder if the Oz species is the same as the Northern hemisphere one. It may well be possible, ferns being ancient plants and dinosaur food they probably were part of Pangea and Gondwanaland