Athyrium asplenioides southern ladyfern

Synonyms: Athyrium filix-femina ssp. asplenioides

This fern has slender reddish or green stipes when it first emerges and distinctive hairs on the stipe and fiddleheads. The twice-pinnate arching green fronds are delicate and feathery.

Habitat & Range

Grows in moist woods, swamps, thickets, and fields; present throughout the state.

Range is from New England, New York, and PA. Also, from Quebec to western Minnesota.

Wetland Code: FAC

Characteristics

Fronds

Sterile and fertile fronds are similar. Blades broadly lanceolate with pointed tips, broadest near or just below the middle. Smooth throughout, variable in form. Cut into 30-40 pairs of pinnae.

Pinnae up to 8 in long. Narrow pointed tips, very short or no stalk. Cut again into 12-20 pairs of pinnules.

Pinnules deeply cut into lobes, with toothed margins; variable; thin-pointed or blunt-tipped. Veins are forked and reach to margins.

Rachis pale, smooth, sometimes with short hairs.

Stipe greenish to reddish with scattered, elongated dark brown scales. Sometimes stipe can be as long as the blade.

Rhizome very scaly, shallow-creeping, often branching and sometimes semi-erect. There may be quite a few dead stalks attached.

Sori elongate, straight, or sometimes hooked. Indusia with hairs but not glands, edge irregularly toothed and attached to long sides of sori. Spores yellowish to brownish.