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.
Psilotum nudum
Also called Cocks crow, Forest moa, Upright whiskfern, Skeleton Fork Fern, Whisk Fern, Skeleton Fork Fern, Psilotum
Whisk fern is a rootless, leafless fern relative with green, forked stems that grows from underground rhizomes. It thrives in warm, humid conditions and is often grown as an epiphyte or in rock crevices.
Psilotum nudum, commonly known as the whisk fern, is a species of fern in the order Psilotales. Like the other species in this order, it lacks roots and instead possesses underground rhizomes. It reporduces by spores.
Psilotum nudum means "bare naked" in Latin, because it lacks (or seems to lack) most of the organs of typical vascular plants as a result of evolutionary reduction. The leaves are not actually absent but greatly reduced.
The plant, which grows wild in southern Japan, was once much cultivated in Japanese gardens as an ornamental plant. Slightly over 100 garden varieties were given fantastic names. Called matsubaran ("pine-needle orchid") in Japanese, it was one of the noble plants in the Edo period (1603–1867).
The species is naturally found on all the main Hawaiian Islands. Known locally as Moa because of its chicken feet like stems, the Hawaiians collected large quantities of the spores and used them like talcum powder, under the loincloth to prevent chafing. The spores were also used medicinally as a purge. Children would play a game called 'moa nahele' or cockfighting with the branch stems. Twigs of the Moa were interlocked and the players pulled on the ends. The loser's twig broke and the winner crowed like a rooster. The species is still often used in making traditional Hawaiian leis.
P. nudum is found in tropical Africa, Central America, tropical and subtropical North America, South America, tropical Asia, Australia, Hawaii, southern Japan, Lord Howe Island, New Zealand, with a few isolated populations in SW Europe ("Los Alcornocales", Spain, Cádiz province). Although most weeds are flowering plants, P. nudum is an unusual example of a weed because it is both nonflowering and rootless.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Psilotum nudum 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.
