What Are Fiddleheads on Ferns?

Hello! My name is Reggie Whitehead. Today I am going to be speaking with you about growing tropical ferns courtesy of the Tropical Fern Exotic Plant Society and on behalf of expertvillage.com. Characteristics of most ferns are these funny looking things here monkey tails, fiddle heads, they are actually called croziers and the croziers are the fern fronds but that its in the state before it unfruls. If you look here this is where the fern croziers actually arise from. They arise from the crodix, the center of the plant and there are four different croziers there. This one is already elongated, this one is next followed by this one and it goes around in a circle, in a spiral. Now if you look at this plant, this tree firm, this shows what happens as the crozier, the fiddlehead continues to unfrul and all these little knobs here buds, are actually the fronds and these are two different species. As these mature and grow out, then the fiddleheads uncurl. Not all ferns will have typical fiddleheads. Let's take a look at the fiddle head here.