Looking great in the garden this week is one of our many favorite ferns, Microlepia strigosa ‘MacFaddeniae’. This interesting selection of the Japanese native fern was named for the garden of California’s Fay MacFadden, who got it from California’s Mr. Baldwin Nursery in the 1920s. Most winters it remains evergreen for us, but can become
Our 2014 tongue fern introduction, Pyrrosia lingua ‘Limon’, was discovered here as a solid gold sport on Pyrrosia lingua ‘Ogon Nishiki’. We took this image last week, of a superbly grown specimen at our sister institution, the JC Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh. This is a lovely evergreen fern, hardy from Zone 7b to 10b. It’s
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Back in 2004, we noticed an odd fern in our spore pots of Dryopteris tokyoensis, so we set it aside for planting in the garden. After several years in the ground, we concluded that it seemed to be a hybrid of the Asian Dryopteris tokyoensis and the North American Dryopteris ludoviciana…something we really didn’t think
Looking fabulous as we head into the heat of summer, is the grey-haired Brazilian sword fern – Pleopeltis lepidopteris ‘Morro dos Conventos’. We introduced this amazing fern in 2018 from a 2012 Yucca Do spore collection from its native range along the sea coasts in Southern Brazil. This evergreen sun lover naturally grows among rocks
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Looking lovely in the dryland garden is the fascinating Wooly Lip Fern, Myriopteris tomentosa. This evergreen North American native, which can be found naturally growing with cactus, has an odd native distribution from Arizona east to Virginia. The foliage emerges a silvery green, that becomes more silver as the new fronds mature. It grows best
Looking great in the worst of winter is the amazing native fern, Pleopeltis michauxiana. This epiphytic fern, which only grows on trees and rocks, can be found in the wild in woodlands from Ohio south to Florida, and west to Oklahoma. We used Liquid Nails construction adhesive to attach a tiny piece to this oak
One of the easiest of the evergreen desert ferns we grow if the North American native, Astrolepis sinuata, better known as wavy cloak fern. This year, we’ve introduced spore grown plants of Astrolepis sinuata ‘Jeff Davis’, from our 2000 spore collection in the West Texas county by the same name. In that desolate region (population
Looking handsome in the winter woodland is Polystichum dracomontanum. While most garden polystichums are either American or Asian in origin, this gem hails from South Africa. The specific epithet “dracomontanum” translates to Dragon Mountain, and in this case indicates that the plant is from the Drakensburg Mountains in South Africa. Although I spent a bit
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Winter is the time when all the evergreen ferns shine, and there are few fern genera that look better in winter than the holly ferns. A favorite that’s rarely offered is the spear-leaf holly fern, Cyrtomium lonchitoides, which hails from Japan, China, and Vietnam. This has the smallest pinnae of the hardy holly ferns, which
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Cyrtomium falcatum ssp. littorale is a dwarf, cold hardy, rock garden-sized form of the common holly fern. Our oldest specimens of this evergreen gem, have topped out at 8″ tall x 15″ wide. While it grows fine in regular soil, it also thrives in rock crevices, where it tolerates several hours of full sun. It’s
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