Cinnamon Fern seems to follow Dylan Thomas’s advice: It does not go gently; it burns and raves and rages against the dying of light, turning from soft green, to pale yellow, then to proud gold before it dies with shriveling bronze gasps. This is happening all around us now.
This relatively large fern, scientifically known as Osmundastrum cinnamomeum, often is referred to as a living fossil because its kind has been on the earth at least 180 million years. As North America became populated, the Abnaki and Menominee ate it as a vegetable; the Iroquois and Cherokee also administered it as a cold and snake bite remedy.
(Brooklin, Maine)