The preference of this plant grow in damp, shady areas such as pits, crevices or caves, probably led to the ancient Greeks to think it forming the crown of Hades, god of the Underworld known to the Romans by Pluto. The same scientific name is of Greek and Latin origin: first, adianton, a word formed by the verb diaino, 'to wet', and the negative form 'a', because it doesn't retain water even if it is immersed in it. On the other hand, capillus-veneris refers to the hair of another classical goddess, Venus. This plant was not only known in mythology, but also in ancient medicine. It appeared in one of the main collections of classical pharmacology and botany, the Materia Medica from the Greek Dioscorides. This important text of the first century A.D. was mainly disregarded during the Middle Ages in Europe, along with much of the knowledge of antiquity. However, copies of this book kept in the Byzantine world, the former Eastern Roman Empire, made it possible for this knowledge to be preserved forever. Precisely Greek texts such as Dioscorides, were known by the Arabs of the East and al-Andalus and gave essential theoretical support for the development of the sciences in medieval Islam. The Venus hair fern can be found in the Alcázar always linked to water sources, like the one in the Garden of the Cross, under the mountain that formerly represented Mount Parnassus, an artificial structure that during the Renaissance and Baroque was inhabited by sculptures of gods of classical mythology.