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Phlebodium aureum
Also called Blue Star Fern, Gold Foot Fern, Hare Foot Fern, Cabbage Palm Fern, Golden Serpent Fern, Rabbit Foot Fern, Golden Polypody, Gold Foot Fern
Golden polypody is an epiphytic fern with large, deeply lobed fronds and a creeping rhizome covered in golden-brown scales. It is grown mainly as a houseplant or greenhouse plant, and it needs humid, bright but not sunny conditions with careful watering.
Phlebodium aureum (golden polypody, golden serpent fern, cabbage palm fern, gold-foot fern, blue-star fern, hare-foot fern; syn. Polypodium aureum, Polypodium leucotomos) is an epiphytic fern native to tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas.
Phlebodium aureum is well-adapted to cultivation and is valued both as an ornamental plant and in herbal medicine.
It can be cultivated in greenhouses in non-tropical climates if night temperatures do not fall below about 5 °C. Several cultivars have been selected for garden planting, with varying leaf color from grey-green to silver-green to blue-green, or with cristate or very wavy frond margins.
It is confined to the eastern side of the Americas and the Caribbean, ranging from the extreme southeast of the US state of Georgia and south into Florida. It is also found in the Bahamas, on Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and the Lesser Antilles, as well as coastal regions of Caribbean and Atlantic South America, including Venezuela, Brazil, Suriname, French Guiana, Guyana, and Paraguay. It is the only species of Phlebodium found in North America or on Caribbean islands; all other species are endemic to South America.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Phlebodium aureum 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.
