’Tis that magical time of year when the woodland floor comes to life, with wildflowers blooming and the sap rising up to green the trees and the fronds of ferns slowly unrolling.

The curled up top of a young fern frond is called a crosier, sometimes a fiddlehead. When its first cells are touched by the warming sunlight of spring, they begin to grow; as they grow, they expand; as they expand, they lengthen; and as they lengthen, they unfurl.

There is perhaps no more powerful symbol of the reawakening of the land in springtime than a fern frond unfurling.