By choosing the marsh fern (Thelypteris palustris) as the Plant of the Year 2023, the Latvian Botanists' Society invites people to discover the wet forests, marshes, and other permanently damp areas where this species can be found.

The marsh fern (Thelypteris palustris) is a fairly common species in Latvia, distributed across the entire territory of the country – yet few will have seen it up close, as this fern grows in places where people do not typically walk – in wet forests, fens, on the banks of lakes and rivers, and even in drainage ditches. By nominating this species as the plant of the year, the Latvian Botanists' Society wishes to draw attention both to the ability of plants to adapt to growing in extreme conditions, and to the wet habitats in the Latvian landscape and their significance in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem resilience against climate change. In our climate, which is rich in precipitation, there appear to be many water bodies, marshes, and other wet places, but their hydrological regime is often affected by land drainage, which disrupts natural plant communities and the microclimate; many beaver families, which love to settle in drainage ditches, can in turn transform former wet forests or marshes into ponds. One of the typical habitats of the marsh fern – swamp forests – is threatened by both land drainage and logging.
Used Julita Kluša's photograph for the original article