Continuing to dive into the topic of fern and fern identification, since we are surrounded by them here. Knowing them better would help me know how best to use them, what circumstances they like or don’t like. Often that’s just observation – you see a fern growing near wild geraniums and think, ‘oh, that’s nice, that will work!’ But deep in your heart you know you wouldn’t know an Alpine Buckler Fern from an acorn.
Up to now I’ve focused on Christmas Ferns and Northern Maidenhair in the garden. I dig up partial clumps on our property with a long serrated knife in the springtime when the ground is wet and relocate them to similar conditions. I’ll do this in the fall this year; and I’m optimistic they will survive if I keep them watered well enough until they and their original neighbors go dormant.
I can identify other ferns, but honestly not very many. Which starts with knowing their structures and how to talk about them because not to be a buzzkill but sometimes iPhone ID makes things up and while in a lot of ways I’m very much a ‘close enough!’ person I also often like to know things just to know them, because science is fun, gardening is art, and I can’t sit around listening to podcasts and waiting for the world to catch fire.
If you too find the distinction between New York ferns and Hay-scented ferns a bit of a head-scratcher, join me, will you? All things can be known, except the explanation for Americans electing a bowl of banana pudding to serve as their president. That, we will never know and it’s probably for the best.
Anyway? Who likes ferns?! Everybody likes ferns. They’re magic. So to continue building on the terminology from the previous post on ferns:
Branching patterns of pinnae:
Simple – fronds are not divided but appear as single leaves emerging from the ground, as in the leaves of daffodils.
Pinnatifid: A blade which is fully lobed, but not fully cut to the rachis (stem). Pinnae appear as undulating structures, as in sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis)
Pinnate: Pinnae are not divided but appear as single lobes, as in Christmas Ferns
Pinnate-Pinnatifid: Pinnules are not fully cut through, as for Interrupted Ferns.
Bipinnate: Pinnae divided twice (Maidenhair ferns, Japanese Painted Fern) 8635 8638
Bipinnate – Pinnatifid: Lady Fern image 8642 (lobed but not fully divided)
Tripinnate – Pinnae divided three times
Bipinnate-pinnatifid: Pinnules on pinna cut through and some lobes on pinnules cut through
Today I want to take a closer look at the ones most relevant to me and a few that are familiar to me but whose names I didn’t previously know. The ferns grow wild on our property. There are many others, including some that like alkaline soils. Our soil mostly leans acid, but there may be pockets of alkalinity I have yet to uncover.
I’m hoping that if I get to know a dozen or so fairly well, I will start to notice the ones I don’t know and examine them more closely, rather than abandoning them to a junk drawer labeled ‘ferns’. And then I’ll have design choices I didn’t previously have at my disposal.
ATHYRIUM (“the lady ferns”)
As I was gathering up the botanical names I realized Northern Lady Fern and Japanese Painted Fern are both in the same genius (athryium). We would say that Lady Fern is ‘native’ or ‘local’ and that Painted Fern is neither of those things, but the evolution and movement patterns of ferns might benefit from a different lens and more nuanced rhetoric than what we use when we speak of ‘native plants’ or ‘native plants for pollinators’.
Long, long ago, fern spores floated freely on an ocean soup that likely covered the planet fully. Given that, their attachment to a place in particular may be worth questioning. I plant both natives and non-native/non-invasives freely, but I know some people don’t. In any case, I do have Japanese Painted Fern living next to a “native” Athyrium sibling, the Northern Lady Fern, and a cultivar at that: ‘Lady in Red’.
Still working on my pinnae technicalities, but I would describe them as bipinnate- the single leaf (pinnae) is clearly divided into a series of smaller ‘leaves’ that meet the costa (the stem between pinnules).
Both have the same sprawling spore pattern, and seem fertile pattern at the same time (mid-August).
ADIANTUM (“the maidenhair ferns”)
There she is. My lovely girl.
There are many subspecies to this genus but only three in the US and only one in New England. Northern maidenhair stands roughly 1-1.5 to 2 feet tall with horizontal fronds that hover above delicate black stems. It does not look like it could win a street fight, yet it is surprisingly sturdy for such an elegant looking plant. You can dig it up pretty much any time, anywhere, and drop it somewhere mostly shady. Try to keep it moist as it establishes, as with any division, but they are surprisingly prolific over time. I have a great tuft beneath a sugar maple and another nestled in the roots of a Pignut Hickory. It shouldn’t work, but work it does. A personal favorite, and stunning with wild geraniums.
Because of the unusual structure – like a lilypad crossed with a fern and duckweed, it is a great contrast with so many things–big floppy hostas, undulating grasses, hellebores, or even other ferns with darker coloration and less complicated structure. The grove where the above image was taken also hosts several large hostas, Japanese painted ferns, various hellebores, brunnera, pulmonaria, and variegated Solomon’s seal, so you can grow quite a lot with it without worrying about failures in contrasting.
OSMUNDA (“the flowering ferns”)
You call them Claytosmunda or Osmundastrum if you like. I want to believe botanists don’t get bored in the way that calls me to rearrange furniture to remind myself that time still passes in January. I am sure some exceptionally taxonomically-important detail slipped into the scientific knowledge base in 2016 causing the genus to split, but there are many sources that continue to use the Osmunda classification so we will hide behind them for cover. .
These ferns, known commonly as Royal, Cinnamon, and Interrupted ‘flower’ by producing inflorescence (or fertile fronds) distinct from the rest of their foliage. (They are not the only ferns that do so – Matteuccia struthiopteris (ostrich ferns) do so as well; see below.)
These images might not make it obvious, but depending on timing and maturity, Cinnamon Fern and Interrupted Fern are very hard to tell apart when not in ‘flower’, so I was deeply appreciative to come across this post that included the tell: Cinnamon Ferns have a tuft of white fuzz where an individual pinna attaches to the stem.
I would tentatively classify Interrupted and Cinnamon ferns as Pinnate-Pinnatifid and Royal Ferns simply as Pinnate, but in doing this research I managed to find so many sources that seemed to be colloquially identifying the same fern as structurally different I’m using those terms more as a compass than GPS coordinates.
Okay, enough of this for now. Next up, New York Ferns versus Hay-scented ferns and whatever my notes remind me I forgot to include thus far.
Ferns. So many ferns.