Fern Care

The Tragic Life of the Air Fern
Michalis 'BIG Mike' Kotzakolios

The air fern is a unique fern in the sense that its name is not evocative of what it actually is. And air fern is not a fern that gets its name from its affiliation with a particular environment nor does the air fern get its name from any special marking on its leaves or fronds. In fact, this 'fern' is not even a fern at all.

So if this 'fern' is not a fern, why is it given that name? Well, the reason is, is that this 'fern' is a collection of dead animal tissue that is squished together. It goes without saying, dead animals smashed together, no matter how nice they look in that position, are going to ever become popular with a truth in advertising moniker. So, air fern seemed to get the nod.

Now, by dead animal tissue, no one is referring to dogs, cats, elephants, sabretooth tigers or anything. They are actually an aquatic animal life form known as hydrozoans. If you have never heard of the late, lamented hydrozoans, that’s ok, no one else has. That has probably been the mitigating factor behind the lack of an anti-hydrozoan death squad backlash. Anyway, when the hydrozoans died no one missed them so they have been appropriated to become faux ferns at the bottom of fish tanks.

Yeah! Those ferns! That’s what we’re taking about. Yes, those little green balls at the bottom of the fish tank have a name. They are the late, great air fern. Now, some people even hang these 'ferns' from their ceilings as ‘regular’ ferns.

This 'fern,' in a way, is one of those indelible parts of the popular culture landscape. One of those things we always see, but never knew had an actual name, nor knew what the history was behind them. So now you have a trivia question to ask at your next coffee break.

BIG Mike is a well known author, developer and Adsense expert as well as the owner of Niche Maniacs - a unique Adsense Marketing System designed to build long-term passive income streams from Adsense, Amazon, YPN, Chitika and other PPC services.