Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Spinulose woodfern

Dryopteris carthusiana

Also called Narrow buckler-fern, Spinulose Wood Fern, Toothed Wood Fern, Narrow Spinulose Shield Fern, Spinulose Shield Fern, Toothed Woodfern

Spinulose woodfern
Photo: Wasp32, CC BY 4.0

Spinulose woodfern is a hardy, mostly deciduous perennial fern from damp forests across the Northern Hemisphere, with upright, dark green fronds. It grows best in acidic, moist woodland conditions and tolerates more sun than many other ferns.

Family
Dryopteridaceae (Wood fern family)
Grows as
Fern, Perennial
Light
Full sun
Water
Keep the soil consistently moist but not waterlogged.
Soil
Acidic, humus-rich, moisture-retaining woodland soil; avoid limey soil.
Temperature
Hardy to around -30 °C; grows well in cool temperate conditions and dies back in harsh winters.
How easy
Easy
Native range
Temp. Northern Hemisphere
Climate
temperate

About

Dryopteris carthusiana is a perennial species of fern native to damp forests throughout the Holarctic Kingdom. It is known as the narrow buckler-fern in the United Kingdom, and as the spinulose woodfern in North America.

It is a tetraploid of hybrid origin, one parent being Dryopteris intermedia, known in North America as the intermediate wood fern, and an unknown, apparently extinct species dubbed Dryopteris semicristata, which is also the presumed parent of the hybrid-origin Dryopteris cristata.

Where it grows

The plant favors acidic ground and even avoids lime rich soil and spring areas favored by many other pteridophyta. It can tolerate direct sunlight slightly better than its relatives and can therefore survive even in some logging sites and benefit from them. It grows often in the following habitats: moist depressions in forests, nemoral forests, coastal scrubs, fresh cliff faces, sides of ditches, coniferous swamps and herb-rich hardwood-spruce swamps (ruohokorpi in Finnish).

Other Dryopteris plants

Dryopteris hasseltii · Hay Scented Buckler Fern · Scaly Male Fern · Coastal woodfern · Mountain woodfern · Log fern · Cinnamon woodfern · Clinton's woodfern · Large Kidney Fern · Shield Fern · Serpent woodfern · Crested woodfern

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Dryopteris carthusiana 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.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…