A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1068 entries
bracken
Pteridium aquilinum, the large coarse fern that covers hillsides — waist-high or higher, spreading by deep rhizomes rather than by spore, and forming stands so dense that little else grows under them. It dies back to rust and copper in autumn and stands dead through winter. It is among the most widely distributed vascular plants on earth, present on every continent except Antarctica.
Etymology
Middle English braken, from a Scandinavian source, related to Old Norse brakni, fern or undergrowth, with relatives in Swedish bräken and Danish bregne. The Latin is better: aquilinum means eagle-like. Cut the rhizome cleanly across and the pattern of the vascular bundles in the section is said to show a spread eagle — a heraldic double-headed one, in some tellings.
Notes
Bracken was a crop before it was a nuisance. It was cut for animal bedding, thatch, and packing, and burned for potash used in soap and glass, which is where the place name element brackenrigg and its relatives come from. A single clone can cover several hectares and live for centuries, which makes some bracken stands among the oldest organisms in a British landscape.