Fiddleheads or fiddlehead greens are the furled fronds from a fledgling fern, harvested for use as a vegetable.
Fiddleheads growing
Fiddlehead sculpture at the Saint John Arts Centre by sculptor Jim Boyd in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada
Bucket of newly collected fiddleheads
Fiddlehead fern as a vegetable
The ferns are a group of vascular plants that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers. They differ from mosses by being vascular, i.e., having specialized tissues that conduct water and nutrients and in having life cycles in which the branched sporophyte is the dominant phase.
Image: Psilotum
Image: Equisetopsida
Image: Flickr brewbooks Angiopteris evecta Mule's foot fern (1)
Image: WP2 Hymenophyllum Exkursion nach Berdorf (Luxemburgexkursion) 011