For the shade gardener who wants to grow edible plants, this shadowy designation of how much—or how little—direct sunlight a space receives is often perceived as second best. “I have a garden, but…it’s very shady.” There is a respectably long list of edible plants you can grow in shade, and in springtime ostrich ferns stand out: These native perennials are the source of edible fiddleheads. Along with ramps, ostrich fern fiddleheads are one of the darlings of spring farmers’ markets, fancy grocery stores, and of course, social media, where a single post can grow desire for them exponentially.
Like ramps, ostrich fern fiddleheads are wild-harvested. While collecting a handful for your own spring supper can be sustainable, these are wild, native plants that are experiencing a surge of interest and are in demand in the spring. When wild things fall prey to commercial-scale appetite, they—and their environment—suffer.
Growing fiddleheads to eat (or sell) is very easy (and the results are rather quicker than with growing ramps). And even if you never eat their crosiers, their tall plumes will grace a garden space, large or small, for a long growing season.
Photography by Marie Viljoen.
Ostrich ferns are Matteuccia struthiopteris. Their native range includes Eastern North America as well as temperate (cold-winter) parts of Europe and Asia. They colonize an area, making it easy for foragers to collect a lot of fiddleheads when they begin to appear in spring. The plants grow from upright rhizomes that form underground runners, which give rise to new ostrich ferns. (I saw my own test patch of ostrich ferns in Brooklyn quadruple in a couple of years.) But the ferns’ roots are close to the surface, and ostrich ferns are highly susceptible to damage from trampling.
Collecting a crosier, or fiddlehead, means one fewer frond for the plant, and less food production to sustain this perennial through its growing season. Fronds feed the fern’s rootstock; cutting too many depletes the plant’s energy. If this treatment is seasonally repeated, the fern is compromised. (And in urban parks, cutting a fiddlehead hijacks that plant’s aesthetic value, too—its raison d’être.)
