I was planting two Comptonia peregrina (better known as Sweet Fern) today, and consequently did a bit of research first.  Sweet Fern is undeservedly, in my opinion, poorly known.  Finding the plant in a nursery is uncommon.  This has always struck me as odd: here is a plant that grows in disturbed, hot, sandy/gravelly, poor soils.  It should be an ideal foundation plant, especially with its fragrant leaves (somewhere between citronella, pine, and rosemary), short habit, and not unpleasing (if not spectacular) winter and summer appearance.  It is a distinctive New England/Mid Atlantic plant, growing wherever road cuts, sand banks, or pine forests exist.  Summer in New England, especially in coastal areas, is linked in the minds of many people with its heady scent.

Well, it turns out there is a reason for its rarity in the nursery trade.  First off, it will not transplant bare-root.  Secondly, getting its seeds to germinate is extremely difficult.  Cuttings are the best way to get another plant but that art has only become common in the last fifteen years or so.  But then, the question arises: if the seeds don’t easily germinate, how does it pop up where-ever a clear-cut has been done?  As it happens the seeds are sensitive to soil disturbance and have the ability to remain dormant and viable for upwards of seventy or more years.   See the linked article for more:  http://arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/articles/445.pdf

This got me thinking about how little we know…we routinely search for ways to protect both organic and inorganic materials from decay…here is a plant that has developed a chemical barrier that allows for indefinite protection of a highly vulnerable organism (a seed embryo) in harsh conditions of freeze/thaw cycles while partially buried in an environment prone to moisture and generally fairly acidic.  It is the sort of thing, if I was a scientist, I’d pay attention to…