Dryopteris carthusiana

Dryopteris carthusiana spinulose wood fern

Deeply cut pinnae give a lacy effect to this firm-textured wood fern. It has wide papery brown scales on the stipes and fuzzy hairs on the back side of the rachis. This fern is common throughout the damp woodlands.

Habitat & Range

Often grows in swamps, but also moist to wet woods, stream banks, moist wooed slopes. Prefers soils that are subacidic.

Range is from Newfoundland to Kentucky, rarer south of lat 38 deg and 42 deg in midlands.

Wetland Code: FACW

Characteristics

Fronds 8-30 in. long; 4-12 in. wide. Fertile fronds are deciduous, sterile ones may overwinter (not often).

Blade narrowly oval to triangular; nearly same width at base as middle of blade, often light to yellow-green; no glandular hairs; cut into 10 to 15 pairs of pinnae.

Pinnae lanceolate, often angled upward; lower pinnae asymmetrical elongated triangles; basal pinnae narrows rapidly from broad base, often slightly shorter than adjacent pinnae.

Pinnules pinnules closest to rachis usually longest; innermost lower pinnule(closest to rachis) in basal pinnae twice as long as opposing (subopposite) upper pinnule. Fine-toothed margins with bristle tips that often curve inward (toward tip of pinnule).

Rachis covered with scattered pale brown scales.

Stipe 2 to 12 in. long; stout, shorter than blade, pale brown scales at base and scattered above, 1/4 to 1/3 of frond.

Rhizome thick, coarse, scaly, short-creeping

Sori small, midway between midvein and marge. Indusium without glands.