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.
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).
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.