Water Fern

water fern, (genus Ceratopteris), small genus of aquatic ferns (family Pteridaceae). Ceratopteris consists of at least four species: broadleaf water sprite (C. cornuta); floating antlerfern, or water horn fern (C. pteridoides); triangle water fern (C. richardii); and water sprite (C. thalictroides). The plants are widespread in tropical and warm temperate regions around the world, and several are cultivated as aquarium plants. Although water ferns sometimes root in mud, more frequently they float on the surface of shallow water in ditches, lakes, and sluggish backwaters of riverine environments.

Individual plants have dimorphic leaves. They produce a rosette of lettucelike, lobed or divided, vegetative leaves, which often have somewhat inflated petioles (an adaptation to floating). These leaves usually produce small meristematic buds along the margin that give rise to “daughter plants,” which are asexual (vegetative) offshoots that eventually grow directly into free-living plants—essentially clones of the initial plant. The fertile leaves of water ferns are much more finely divided than the vegetative ones, and the narrow leaf segments have the undersurface nearly entirely covered with sporangia (spore-producing structures). The sporangia are protected in part by the recurved margins of the leaf segments. The spores are globose and trilete.

Ceratopteris species have become quite important as an educational and research tool for studying various genetic processes. The life cycle of these ferns proceeds rapidly compared with most other plants. Mature spores germinate within three to four days and complete the gametophyte (haploid) phase of the life cycle rapidly. On average, it is possible to complete the life cycle from mature sporulating plant to mature sporulating plant within about four months, whereas typical land ferns require a year or more to go through this same process. Because ferns are an ideal system in which to study the inheritance patterns of various genetic traits, numerous strains of water fern, with individual genetic mutations of various sorts, have been bred and are maintained in culture collections, and detailed instructions on creating new mutant lines have been developed. These are made available to researchers and teachers under the trade name C-Fern.