Resurrection Ferns of the High Desert

The first time I ever saw this plant it was being sold in a street market near Jackson Square in New Orleans and being marketed as a “resurrection fern“, but it is not technically a fern and soon after being “resurrected“ it is undeniable that every individual sold in that street market in New Orleans was then promptly killed within a matter of days. It is damn near impossible to replicate the conditions of the Chihuahua Desert in the Southern Louisiana Swamp, and no doubt every plant in that street market was plucked off of limestone in West Texas in a habitat nearly identical to this one - rocky limestone slopes. It’s not like it matters much though, because this plant is so ecologically successful in the limestone deserts of Texas and Northern Mexico that it basically grows like a weed. It reproduces by spores, not seed. The spores are produced in between the decussate bracts in the sporophylls, technically termed a strobilus, where the flattened “leaves“ elongate a