We find the beautiful lady fern in fairly moist to quite wet areas, oftentimes in ditches, drainage areas, and swamps. Like most plants, it can range significantly in size. In the most favourable sites (lots of moisture and nutrients) the leaves can easily be 1.8 m long, while in drier sites the leaves might only reach a 40-50 cm.
Lady fern growing in a moderately favourable site. These leaves are around 80 cm long, but in a swampier site, they can get significantly larger and longer. Photo credit: Hitomi KimuraAnother lady fern specimen. Note how the cluster of leaves emerge from a central point. Contrast this with bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum) – where leaves appear from an underground trailing stem and are hence dispersed along the ground. If you looked carefully at the center of a lady fern plant, you would find the growing tip and a very compressed stem. Photo credit: Douglas FraserThis is a single leaf, or frond, of lady fern. The leaf is ‘compound’, meaning that it consists of a leaf stalk with many leaflets. Notice the overall shape of the leaf, it is “diamond-shaped”, i.e. pointy at each end and wide in the middle. It is hard to see in this photo, but the base of the leaf stalk has sparse rusty-coloured flaky scales on it. Photo credit: Hitomi KimuraDetail of lady fern leaf. The leaf is quite delicate and breaks easily. Contrast this with e.g. sword fern (Polystichum munitum) that has leathery tough leaves. Photo credit: Hitomi KimuraDetail of underside of lady fern leaf. The light green crescent-shaped structures are called ‘sori’. They are clusters of tiny ‘sporangia’ containing the spores used for reproduction. As the leaf matures, the sori darken to a brown colour. You can see a few rusty-coloured flaky scales along the leaf stalk. Photo credit: Douglas Fraser
