The open plant encyclopedia
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.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Ophioglossum vulgatum
Also called Southern Adder's Tongue, Adder's Tongue Fern, English Adder's Tongue, Common Adder's Tongue, Southern Adder’s Tongue, Southern Adderstongue
Adder's-tongue (Ophioglossum vulgatum) is a small perennial fern from the adder's-tongue family, native to temperate Eurasia, northeast North America and parts of Africa. It is a wild woodland and meadow fern, rarely grown in gardens, and does best in moist, lightly shaded, undisturbed ground.
Ophioglossum vulgatum, commonly known as adder's-tongue, southern adder's-tongue or adder's-tongue fern, is a species of fern in the family Ophioglossaceae.
The chloroplast genome was reported to have a size of 138,562 base pairs.
It is native to many regions with a wide scattered distribution: throughout temperate through tropical Africa and throughout the temperate Northern Hemisphere in Europe, northeastern North America, temperate Asia, and Eurasia.
Traditional European folk use of leaves and rhizomes as a poultice for wounds. This remedy was sometimes called the "Green Oil of Charity". A tea made from the leaves was used as a traditional European folk remedy for internal bleeding and vomiting.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Ophioglossum vulgatum 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.
