California’s unprecedented dry spell has tested the limits of drought-tolerant ferns, which carpet the forest floor underneath the West Coast’s iconic redwoods, according to a new study by UC Santa Cruz scientists.

 

“We’ve never seen a drought of this magnitude,” said co-author Jarmila Pittermann, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. “You’re used to seeing a green understory, but in the last four years without rain, they’re white or brown. They dried up.”