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.
Polypodium scouleri
Also called Scouler's Polypody, Coast Polypody, Leather Leaved Polypody, Leather Leaf Fern
Leathery polypody is a coastal fern from western North America that grows on rocks, bluffs and in forests near the sea. It is rarely grown as a houseplant and does best in cool, humid, lightly shaded spots.
Polypodium scouleri is a species of fern known by the common names leathery polypody, Scouler's polypody, coast polypody and leather-leaf fern. It is native to coastal western North America from British Columbia to Guadalupe Island off Baja California. It is a plant of the coastline, growing in cracks on coastal bluffs, in oceanside forests, beach dunes, and similar habitat. It is often affected by heavy fogs and sea spray. This polypody anchors with a waxy, scaly rhizome. It produces triangular or oblong leaves up to 85 centimeters (33 in) in maximum length and 8 cm (3.1 in) width. Each leaf is made up of many round-tipped linear or oblong segments which are usually stiff and leathery in texture and edged with shallow, rounded teeth. The underside of each leaf segment is crowded with rounded sori each up to half a centimeter wide. The sori contain the spores.
Polypodium abitaguae · Irregular polypody · Appalachian polypody · California polypody · Nested polypody · Southern Polypody · Polypodium chionolepis · Polypodium ensiforme · Licorice fern · Western polypody · Intermediate Polypody · Dotted polypody
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Polypodium scouleri 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.
