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Botrychium lunaria
Also called Moonwort, Unshoe The Horse, Common Moonwort, Moonwort, Moonwort Grapefern
Common moonwort is a small, hardy fern from cool northern regions that grows wild in grassland, dunes and open woods. It is a native wild species rather than a common garden or houseplant, and it dies down each summer and can stay dormant for several seasons.
Botrychium lunaria is a species of fern in the family Ophioglossaceae known by the common name moonwort or common moonwort. It is the most widely distributed moonwort, growing throughout the Northern Hemisphere across Eurasia and from Alaska to Greenland, as well as temperate parts of the Southern Hemisphere.
Moonwort has a circumpolar distribution, being recorded in Eurasia, North America and Greenland. It also occurs in north Africa, the Himalayas, and temperate zones of Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand and South America. Although its distribution is patchy, and it may be locally rare, it is rated as of least concern in The IUCN Red List of threatened species. There is evidence of some decline in the British Isles, and in Ukraine, 189 loci were recorded, 118 before 1980, 58 after 1980 and 13 after 1980. In Britain it is found mainly in the north and west, while in the lowlands of England it has been largely lost and the decline continues. For example, in Worcestershire it had been recorded at seven sites in the past but now appears to be restricted to a single site.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Botrychium lunaria by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
