Question for the hive mind: bonus ferns?

I bought a small bay tree (like, four-inch pot small) last week sometime, because the plant looked really good. Most of our bays aren't looking so hot. Nothing really wrong with them, I think, just, they're slow growers, and it was winter, and so they've just been maintaining until spring. This one was better than most, a little bigger, got started on new growth a little earlier, and so on.

I'd been thinking about getting it for a while, 'cause bays (Laurus nobilis) have a long and mostly positive relationship with people, but what pushed me over the edge was actually not the plant itself, but this:


I think they're baby ferns. We do have volunteer ferns pop up from time to time in the greenhouse, so this isn't hugely farfetched, and they look sort of like what I've been told fern prothalli (pro = first; thallus = green shoot) look like. I asked a co-worker, and she said that it was lichen. I know what lichen looks like, and this ain't no lichen. However, I'm far from certain they're fern prothalli, either. Would any of the readers happen to know?

Also, if they are ferns, what should I do with them now, if anything?


There's actually a second purpose in posting these pictures, though: I've had a question to ask for quite a while and hadn't really had the right moment to ask it. My question is about "bonus" plants. Like, if you go to buy a plant, and you see that there's something else growing in the pot too, something that clearly wasn't supposed to be there, does this make you think Awesome! A free plant!, or does it make you think Cripes, these people are too lazy to weed?

I ask because there have been occasions, like this one, where I've bought a plant not for the plant I was paying for, but for a plant that had stowed away in the same pot. This doesn't generally work out all that well, though I did get a Bryophyllum daigremontianum that way once, that I then grew for a few months, and it was okay. But when I'm going through the greenhouse, looking for stuff to do, I sometimes see this kind of thing and wonder whether or not I should pull the extras out of the pots. So I figure I can ask you guys: as customers, do the presence of "bonus plants" make you more, or less, likely to buy a plant? 'Cause, just because it works on me is no reason to think it'd work on anybody else.