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Pteris vittata
Also called Ladder brake fern, Chinese Brake, Chinese Ladder Brake, Ladder Brake, Ladder Brake Fern
Ladder brake is a fern in the Pteridaceae family, native to parts of Asia, Africa, southern Europe and Australia, often found on limestone and walls. It is grown for its attractive fronds and is notable for absorbing arsenic from soil.
Pteris vittata, the Chinese brake, Chinese ladder brake, or simply ladder brake, is a fern species in the Pteridoideae subfamily of the Pteridaceae. In the Ghanaian Akan dialect, it is called "Ayan". It is indigenous to Asia, southern Europe, tropical Africa (West and South Africa), and Australia. The type specimen was collected in China by Pehr Osbeck.
Pteris vittata is native and widespread in the paleotropics: found from the west(in Ghana; Togo; Cote D'Ivoire; Benin), east, to the south tropical, and southern Africa (in Angola; Kenya; Lesotho; Malawi; Mozambique; Namibia; Tanzania (including the Zanzibar Archipelago); Cape Province, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, and Transvaal in South Africa; Eswatini; Uganda; Zambia; and Zimbabwe); temperate and tropical Asia (in the provinces of Anhui, Gansu, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hubei, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Xizang, and Yunnan in China; the prefectures of Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, and the Ryukyu Islands of Japan; and Thailand); and Australia, in the states of New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, and Western Australia.
Although it grows readily in the wild, Pteris vittata is sometimes cultivated. It is grown in gardens for its attractive appearance, or used in pollution control schemes: it is known to be a hyperaccumulator plant of arsenic used in phytoremediation.
Cretan brake · Slender brake · Spider brake · Cretan Brake · Brake fern
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Pteris vittata 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.
Pet safety from the ASPCA toxic and non-toxic plant lists.
