FIELD ID CHARACTERISTICS:
Attractive, lacy, light green fern. Pinnae and pinnules alternately arranged. Pinnae near the base point downward, less at right angles to the stem than other pinnae. Light green color, and often purple stems, helps distinguish this fern. Stems break easily.
Synonym(s): Athyrium asplenioides
Description: Medium light green fine-frond fern to approximately 1 m in height. Grows from rhizomes.
Leaves: Fronds 40 to 100 cm long and 10 to 35 cm wide. Because of its finely toothed pinnae, this fern is delicate and lacy in appearance. Pinnae arranged alternately along the stem. Surfaces of fertile and sterile fronds similar in appearance.
Flowers/Fruit: No flowers, but fertile fronds contain crescent-shaped sori on the undersides of the fronds. Sori appear May to September.
Habit and Range: Wet woods, streamsides, and swamps throughout North Carolina.
Taxonomic Note: North Carolina's common ladyfern is ssp. asplenioides.
COMMON CONFUSIONS:
Fronds of Athyrium filix-femina (common ladyfern) can be confused with Osmundastrum cinnamomeum (Cinnamon fern), which grows in clumps and has tiny hairs at the base of the frond pinnae and fiddleheads are very fuzzy with reddish-brown hairs.
Click here to view Osmundastrum cinnamomeum.
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