A crozier is the long ceremonial staff a bishop carries. The top is not a straight cross: it curls over in a hook, rather like the old stick a shepherd used to catch a sheep. That is the picture the Church is drawing — a bishop looks after people the way a shepherd looks after a flock. You see it in processions, in paintings, and on a bishop's coat of arms. It is a church word, formal and a little old; nobody calls an ordinary walking stick a crozier. Though actually, the head of a monastery (an abbot) may carry one too, not only a bishop. The curved head is often silver or gold and richly decorated. Another spelling is crosier; both are correct. Gardeners also use the word for the coiled young head of a fern, because it looks like the same hook — same picture, different world.