Polypodium virginianum rock polypody

An overwintering fern with leathery small fronds that forms dense mats on rocks and sometimes tree bases.

Habitat & Range

Cliffs, ridges, rocky slopes, also on tree crevices and roots. Most luxuriant in cool damp shade on rocks along watercourses.

Range is from Newfoundland south to Georgia, TN, and north to South Dakota and Minnesota.

Wetland code: Not classified

Phenology

Overwinters; produced spores summer to fall.

Characteristics

Fronds up to 16 in. long. Variable in form; taller fronds erect and spreading, lower fronds spreading, younger fronds often prostrate.

Blade leathery; deep green on both sides, maybe lustrous above; oblong to lanceolate, widest near the middle; cut almost to rachis into 10 to 20 pairs of lobes which are smooth, alternate and either entire or with tiny rounded teeth. Lowest pair of lobes are smaller than middle pairs. Upper lobes blunter, reducing evenly in size to a pointed tip at the end of the blade. Veins obscure and forked.

Rachis smooth, green, slender, sparsely scaly. Appears sunken below the plane of blade's upper surface, slightly raised on undersurface.

Stipe up to 1/3 length of blade. Slender, round, smooth, light dull green, sometimes with sparse, narrow, brownish scales. Swollen at base where attached to rhizome.

Rhizome horizontal, widely spreading and creeping, often with a whiting bloom; produces linear rows of fronds. Slender, densely covered with scales of different shades of brown.

Sori large, round, pale brown; in rows on either side of the midvein or scattered.