Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. With each fern no wider than an inch, mosquito ferns turned ...

Fifty-five million years ago, when scientists believe the Earth was in a near-runaway state, dangerously overheated by greenhouse gases, the Arctic Ocean was also a very different place. It was a ...

If you ever watch a duck float across a pond, gobbling up the vegetation coating the surface, that bird is way ahead of its time. The buoyant greenery is azolla, a tiny fern that grows like crazy, ...

The aquatic term, 'azolla' together with the blue-green algae (anabaena azollae) provides a symbiotic association that can fix agronomically significant amounts of nitrogen (N). The usefulness of ...