Forest fern

Forest fern. Fern-like, or ferns (Latin: Polypodiophyta), is a department of vascular plants, which includes both modern ferns and some of the oldest higher plants that appeared about 405 million years ago in the Devonian period of the Paleozoic era. Giant plants from the group of tree ferns largely determined the appearance of the planet in the late Paleozoic-early Mesozoic era.

Modern ferns are one of the few ancient plants that have preserved a significant diversity comparable to what was in the past. Ferns vary greatly in size, life forms, life cycles, structural features and other features. Their appearance is so characteristic that people usually call them all the same - "ferns" - without suspecting that this is the largest group of spore plants: there are 48 families, 587 genera and 10,620 species of ferns