Description
Wood Fern family (Dryopteridaceae)
Image by Ken-ichi Ueda, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Updated 18 January 2025
$7.00
A genus of small, clumping, sun-loving ferns for the rock garden. This is the most common member of the genus in New York and native to the Catskills. It needs at least a few hours of direct sun each day to thrive and maintain a compact, attractive habit. Hairs on new fronds are white, turning brownish- orange in summer, hence the fern’s com- mon name. Fronds will dry out and curl up in a drought, but the plants isn’t dead – when rains return the frond will uncurl and regain its grayish-green color. We have 3 or 4 of these growing in the Catskill Mountaintop Garden at the entrance to the nursery. The species is not being grown in horticulture, so we decided to collect spores from Catskill Mountain plants and grow it ourselves. We had success getting gametophytes to develop from spores, but less success getting sporophytes (what we normally think of as a fern) to develop from the gametophytes, then transitioning the sporophytes to the drier outdoors from their mini-greenhouse enclosure. In 2024 we sent off spores to a commercial fern grower in the hope they are successful – we’ll then obtain fern plugs from the grower, and pot those up into 1-quart containers. If all goes well perhaps we’ll have some plants in 2025 but 2026 is more likely.
Available on backorder
Wood Fern family (Dryopteridaceae)
Image by Ken-ichi Ueda, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Updated 18 January 2025