I have two fern clones…
Four years ago in school I took a cell culture class and one of our projects was to make clones from a fern my teacher had and record their growth all semester. It was my favorite thing I have ever done in school and I loved my little ferns so much I wanted to keep them!
They have grown so much in the past few years.
To clone a fern you just snip a piece off one of the runners they put out, sterilize it so it can’t catch any diseases and then put it in sterile growth media and watch it grow! I couldn’t resist adding pictures of my lab notebook, my notes crack me up.
There’s also tons of typos, eek! I was also a little wild that semester and wrote all my notes with a calligraphy pen. My hand writing doesn’t normally look like that.
Steven had looked through my notebook and found it amusing.
I don’t think anyone had ever taken their ferns home with them before, but I couldn’t imagine leaving them behind! Before I brought them home I had to transfer them to new media on the last day of class after the final exam (probably why no one ever took theirs home before!) luckily my teacher happened to have some laying around and made up some fresh tubes for me! When I got them home they lived on my bedside table for the next year 🙂
Here they are after a few months of growth in their new tubes. The top one if fern 1, and then bottom one is fern 2.
When they were big enough it was time to plant them in soil, what an exciting day! I found these little plastic containers that acted as perfect little greenhouses. Since the ferns were so used to living in a high moisture environment, it would have been too much of a shock to just plant them in a pot right out of the test tube.
Here they are in their first pots! Fern 1 is on the left and fern 2 is one the right. It’s funny how fern 1 has always been more long and straggly, and fern 2 has always been a leafy mess. I’ve always been able to tell them apart!
And here they are now, enjoying the summer on my front porch!
Fern 1
And fern 2. I still remember when I bent the runner in half trying to get it in the media for the first time. I thought it would die for sure, but it ended up being the stronger of the two!
I love my ferns and I still can’t believe I grew these little guys from a test tube!
That is awesome – great that you still have them two. My two lemon plants I've named in a similar way, with plant 2 being the stronger of the pair. I'm attempting to grow some sedums from some cuttings and leafs that I've just started off a couple of days ago mainly because the one we have in the gardens just in the wrong place shade wise and well, free plants if they work out! My kitchen window is full of plant pots!
This is so cool! They've grown so much! Shawn likes to take cuttings of our various plants, so we have a ton of plants all over the apartment that all started from two or three main plants.
This is awesome, they've grown so well! My mum's into cloning plants, I got super embarrassed once when she took a cutting from a plant in the doctors office. It really is so amazing to me though how a bit of a plant to grow roots and turn into a whole plant. And I have to say, your handwriting looks really good with the calligraphy pen!
http://www.oh-darling.net
these are so neat! i just love keeping track of natural things in a journal. i find that note from your husband so sweet. personally, i didn't think it was THAT funny, but it just goes to show you that everyone looks at things so differently based on who they are and what they've been through.
love this photography journey of the growing process. so cool, great job!
-Abigail
Looks nice. Very lively and green.
I love growing plants from cuttings! It's so much fun.
That's so cool! I'd love to have more house plants but my cats eat them. -_-
Thanks so much! Haha, a cutting from a doctors office plant, if I was less shy I'd probably do the same thing!
Thanks so much! I wasn't even trying to be funny when I wrote that, just being accurate, it looked puny! Haha.
Thanks!
How brilliant that you kept the ferns! It is amazing how much they've grown. I'm glad you didn't leave them behind, they've turned into such beautiful and vibrant looking plants. I would have loved to have done something like this back in my school days.
And your calligraphy pen handwritten is pretty darn spiffy!
I Love that you have fern clones that you grew and now display on your front porch, you brainy brilliant scientist!
Great photos as well, as always, and you know how to tell a good story. Your blog is so interesting, like you!!
Xo ♥ mum
Thanks! I sure never expected them to do so well!
Thanks! 😀
This is just too cool! Your notes are great, and super fancy with the calligraphy pen.
Your notes remind me of those Month-to-Month baby books in which you fill in the info for how your baby is growing. Your baby ferns! 😀