Planting ferns for pleasure 



Martha H. Hollinshead 



The rootstock is the thing to consider when planning a fern 

 garden at home. It takes experience to move wild plants to 

 tame places. Suitable soil, shade, and moisture are necessary 

 but the root system must have room to develop. 



Dennstaedtia has a hardy, branching rootstock which 

 monopolizes the space assigned to it and some of it has to be 

 uprooted from time to time to keep it in bounds. It is a good 

 fern to transplant because it is so adaptable. It grows in the sun 

 by roadside ditches and in stony pastures. It grows in the shade 

 and hangs its green drapery over the rocky sides of glens where 

 there are waterfalls. The frond is beautifully cut, light green in 

 color, bleaching in age to straw color. The light green mingles 

 pleasingly with the bluish-green Aspidiums in the woods. The 

 frond tapers toward the apex and occasionally there is a forked 

 specimen, like one I found at Buck Hill Falls. Always it has its 

 characteristic odor, which is not like hay at all. Only one 

 species, D. punctilohula, is native to the United States and 

 Canada; others are found all over the world from the Himalayas 

 to the Andes and south to Madagascar. It is such an interesting 

 fern that it should not be exiled from the home grounds even 

 though its rooting system is so exasperating. 



The Cinnamon Fern has a rootstock that creeps along just 

 below the surface of the soil, dies off at one end, shows scars of 

 old crowns in the middle and sends up a new crown of fronds 

 each year from the living portion. This takes space. In suitable 

 surroundings Osmunda cinnamomea will live twenty-five years 

 or more after transplanting and holds its own in a bed where lily 

 of the valley, ivy, and spurge are sharing the sustenance but it 

 does not grow six feet tall as when better fed. It starts to grow 

 in April and clothed in wool, remains almost stationary if the 

 weather is cold and stormy. If it is warm and sunny the fern 

 may grow a foot high by the end of the month. The sporangia 

 are dehiscent by the middle of June. Late September frosts turn 

 the fronds brown, though when sheltered they may linger on 

 into November. 



Nearly forty years ago some Interrupted Ferns were dug up 

 in a meadow, hauled in a barrow and planted in a sheltered 



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