Ferns (Disaster Taxa)

When the asteroid hit 66 million years ago and killed the dinosaurs, ferns inherited the Earth. The 'fern spike' in the fossil record - a sudden dominance of fern spores immediately above the impact layer - tells a story of catastrophe and opportunity. While other plants struggled in devastated landscapes with poor soil and unstable conditions, ferns thrived. They are disaster taxa: fast-reproducing, spore-dispersing, tolerant of environments that would kill their competitors.

But ferns also represent something more fundamental to this book's methodology. We have better data on why ferns succeed or fail than why companies do. Biologists must infer mechanism from rigorous observation - measuring drought resistance, testing reproduction rates, tracking survival across conditions. Companies, by contrast, offer self-reported narratives that confuse correlation with causation. When we study fern drought resistance, we get mechanism-based understanding that can be measured, replicated, and tested.

The business insight isn't 'be like a fern.' It's that sustainable strategy requires the same rigor: observable mechanisms, testable hypotheses, evidence over narrative. Ferns teach us that success in catastrophe comes from traits you built before the disaster - not heroic pivots invented during crisis.