fern

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun Any of numerous flowerless, seedless vascular plants that produce spores giving rise to free-living gametophytes and that often have dissected leaves.

from The Century Dictionary.

• Long ago; long before.
• Ancient; old; former; past; previous.
• Distant; remote; far off.
• noun In Australia, Ophioderma pendula.
• noun The royal fern, Osmunda regalis, which grows in low, wet situations and is thus associated popularly with snakes. See Osmunda.
• noun In Australia, Grammitis australis, a small species with simple leaves.
• noun Same as floating-fern. See Ceratopteris.
• noun One of a large group of vascular cryptogamous plants, constituting the natural order Filices.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• adverb obsolete Long ago.
• adjective Ancient; old. [Obs.] “Pilgrimages to … ferne halwes.” [saints].
• noun (Bot.) An order of cryptogamous plants, the Filices, which have their fructification on the back of the fronds or leaves. They are usually found in humid soil, sometimes grow epiphytically on trees, and in tropical climates often attain a gigantic size.
• noun See under Christmas.
• noun (Bot.) a delicate North American fern (Lygodium palmatum), which climbs several feet high over bushes, etc., and is much sought for purposes of decoration.
• noun (Zoöl.), [Eng.] a fern thicket.
• noun [Prov. Eng.] The short-eared owl.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun Any of a group of some twenty thousand species of vascular plants classified in the Division Pteridophyta (formerly known by some as Filicophyta) that lacks seeds and reproduces by shedding spores to initiate an alternation of generations.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun any of numerous flowerless and seedless vascular plants having true roots from a rhizome and fronds that uncurl upward; reproduce by spores