Davis McCombs

I love the mossy quietness
That grows upon the great stone flags,
The dark tree-ferns, the staghorn ferns,
The prehistoric, antlered stags
That carven stand and stare among
The silent, ferny wilderness.

—W. J. Turner, “Magic”

I was standing in line, fidgeting and impatient, at Garvan Woodland Gardens near Hot Springs, Arkansas, when I noticed it. Suspended by a heavy chain from the eaves of the outdoor Chipmunk Cafe where we were waiting to order lunch, was one of the weirdest looking, most spectacular plants I have ever seen. 

We were visiting Hot Springs with my mother and sister and we had come to the botanical gardens on a perfect June morning, early enough that the cool of the mountain night still clung to the rocky folds and thrusts of the Ouachitas. The 210-acre property, owned and operated by the University of Arkansas, stretches along a wooded and rocky section of Lake Hamilton's shoreline. It’s an extraordinary place, a perfect example of how good garden and landscape design can enhance and deepen the experience of an already beautiful site.

When I exclaimed about the plant, a nearly involuntary reaction, my mother, ahead of me in line, identified the species as a staghorn fern. She held my place while I went over to get a closer look.

As I examined the plant, I was struck by what I would later learn are its shield or basal fronds. These plate-shaped and unfertile "leaves" have a remarkable ability to grasp onto and conform to whatever surface they touch. I've seen this process referred to as "laminating" and that term seems an apt description of what they do. It's the method by which the ferns in the wild attach to the trunks of trees. The shield fronds of this potted specimen now formed a huge, loose and papery sphere about the size of a beach ball; out of it the bifurcated "antler" fronds, hence the name "staghorn,” sprouted. And somewhere, down under all of it, was, I assumed, the pot or basket in which the fern had originally been planted.

I love plants. It’s difficult to describe the fascination and delight they produce in me. One of my earliest memories involves misting the leaves of a large schefflera in the sunroom of the house where I grew up. I was very young but I distinctly remember that it was a rainy day and that I was upset about not being able to go outside. I still recall how the dark green, waxy leaves and the smell of the mist and the damp potting soil comforted me.

Fast forward through many houseplants and gardens and flower beds to June 2019, and I found myself, as I so often do, falling completely under the spell of a plant. Something about this one evoked subtropical forests, a hot wind rattling curls of bark, and the kind of light I've seen in Florida filtering through palmettos onto sand.

As soon as we got home to Fayetteville, I bought a small pot filled with several staghorn "pups" at a local nursery. I re-potted them in a hanging basket stuffed with sphagnum moss and bits of bark and hung it on our wraparound porch, just outside our bedroom window, a location where it thrived.

All that summer, when I was trying to go to sleep, trying to keep my mind from veering into its darkest corners, I would think about the staghorn fern, its lamplit  fronds visited by moths and tiny tree frogs, and pretty soon I'd be climbing down the rungs of sleep into that so often elusive ravine of dreams. 

Staghorns, like orchids, are epiphytes, meaning they grow on other plants but, unlike parasites, they derive their moisture and nutrients from air, rain, or from the debris that collects around them. They “thrive[],” as Hart Crane put it in his poem “The Air Plant,” “on saline nothingness.”

Wanting to learn everything I could about the plant, I spent several lunch breaks in my office that summer watching online videos about staghorn ferns. One of the clips I found was uploaded by a man in Alabama who referred to his giant staghorn, a truly gargantuan specimen, as "one of my pride and joys." Rick L. Orchids, as he bills himself on YouTube, has been growing this particular fern since 1983, moving the plant inside his house each winter and hanging it, by means of an elaborate pulley system, from the high ceiling of a light-filled room. At the close of the video, he says something that resonated with me.  

"Go out and buy you a staghorn," he advises. 'They're a great plant to have. Any type of plant is good to keep around just because, if nothing else, it keeps you trained, it keeps you continually thinking about 'I need to water something, I need to feed something, I need to care for something, I need to look at something.' That's just good to be doing. It's always good to have a plant around."

I believe that with all that I am. 

tonight a tree frog

singing in the moonflowers—

a throat among throats