Ferns



Sun to partial shade 2-4 ft tall
Polystichum acrostichoides
Christmas Fern is a rhizome subterranean, decumbent, woody, densely scaly-scrufy evergreen that may grow 2 to 3 feet high in a fountain-like manner. The leaves are known as fronds. The fronds have many leaflets and grow directly from the ground in a clump, so no bark is present. No flowers are produced. The fern produces black spores on the underside of the leaf. Its fiddleheads emerge silvery in the spring.
Osmunda cinnamomea
Stately fern foliage with curled, fragile cinnamon spikes that form in Spring and remain through Fall.
Matteuccia struthiopteria
Ostrich ferns are especially showy. These deciduous ferns produce large, upright clumps of finely dissected medium green fronds, which resemble long feathery ostrich plumes. Emerging from the base in spring, these vegetative fronds grow in a way that is similar to the familiar curly fiddlehead ferns as they unfurl. Each frond can grow to be up to four feet long.
Zones 3-7