Maidenhair – The Daily Flower for 22 March

Today's daily flower connotes secrecy in floriography. The first secret being that it isn't a flower at all. Like all ferns, maidenhair is a non-vascular, non-flowering, seedless plant – and here comes its second secret: maidenhair it may be, but maidenhead? Nope. Ferns have a full 5-phase lifecycle.

For something supposedly so secretive, there are a surprising number of maidenheads around – over 200 species, in fact. And they're not all small and shy, either; many ferns in the Adiantum (meanin, roughly, 'unwettable') genus are quite enormous.

True maidenhair, Adiantum Capillus-veneris, is purported to have a whole host of hidden medicinal properties to boot: from a hair tonic (must have been during the hey-day of correlative doctoring) to 'a remedy in pectoral complaints'. Do the remedies actually work? Well, that'd be telling, now, wouldn't it?

Adiantum capillus-veneris

Good for giving to: Tight-lipped, teflon-coated ticklethroats.

Great maidenhair in literature:

May, they told him, was in the dining-room inspecting the mound of Jacqueminot roses and maidenhair in the centre of the long table, and the placing of the Maillard bonbons in openwork silver baskets between the candelabra.

From 'The Age of Innocence'  by Edith Wharton

Tags: flowers, Maidenhair, fern, Adiantum capillus-veneris, floriography