For decorating your home indoors, making it feel cool, woodsy, and rich, softening stark, harsh architectural lines, or unifying a decorative scheme—nothing rivals the beauty of graceful, green ferns.
Here are plants with such purity of form you can’t go wrong however you use them. In addition to decorative value, ferns give you a great deal of growing satisfaction. They have no limited, spectacular season of flowers. Most ferns stay green and lush year-round.
They come in a wide variety of forms—gracefully bold to daintily fine—and a wide range of subtle shades of harmonious green. They make no tiring demands on your eye. Ferns are always cool, calm, and refreshing.
Ways To Use Ferns
And there are so many ways to use them. Try several of the same variety or a mixture massed at the base of a not-too-sunny bay window.
Combine them with other plants in any indoor garden. Hang a feathery fern ball or basket where its silhouette can be seen against the light.
Set a miniature in a brandy snifter or bell jar as a table centerpiece. Plant a terrarium with the smaller types, using fern-like selaginellas to cover the soil between.
Use ferns in any kind of artificial light installation, from the bookcase shelf to a built-in indoor “greenhouse.”
Forget, right now, what you’ve always heard about how difficult ferns are to grow in the home. Instead, think about how they grow in the wild—in the shaded spots of moist, cool, or tropical woods. There you have the secret of keeping them happy.
Light
Provide shade or diffuse strong light with a gauzy curtain.
Humidity
Keep it high, as in the woods. Set the pots on pebbles in a shallow tray of water. Operating an inexpensive vaporizer or steam kettle for a few hours every day works wonders.
Soil
Never clay, never coarse and sandy; always light and fibrous, with a high proportion of such humus as leaf mold from the woods, screened compost, and peat moss.
Broken charcoal will help to keep the soil sweet. No fertilizer except, perhaps, a small amount of bone meal (3/4 pint for each bushel of soil mix).
This, of course, is for the terrestrial, or soil-growing types. Epiphytic (growing in the air, as on tree branches) ferns like a fibrous, porous mix of coarse peat moss or leaf mold, shredded fir bark or sphagnum moss, and a small amount of sand for drainage. No bone meal here; chunks of old, dried cow manure if you can provide them.
Fertilizer
Never strong, never frequent. Weak manure “tea” monthly is plenty if the soil mix is suitable.
Temperature
55° to 60° degrees Fahrenheit at night for most, around 70° degrees Fahrenheit by day. Avoid sudden extremes of heat or cold, drafts, and noxious artificial gas.
Watering
Most ferns grow moist or wet, and should never be allowed to dry out. On the other hand, their roots should never be waterlogged; pots should never stand in water. Use water at room temperature.
Repotting
Usually in spring, when new growth starts. Use shallow pots or pans for most, or baskets. Select a size just slightly larger than the root ball. An inch of broken crock or gravel in the bottom will promote drainage.
Loosen the old soil around the roots, and set the plant so the crown is level with the top of the soil or just above it. Firm the soil around the roots very gently.
Propagating Ferns
Spring is also the most usual time for propagating ferns. Most varieties rest in winter, but only to the extent of “standing still.” Very few drop their fronds completely.
In February, when fresh new growth appears, you can divide the roots or crowns of large, old plants, and pot up the divisions.
Later in the season, some types of ferns send out runners which will root at the tips if they can touch the soil.
These new plantlets can be cut off and potted. Other types send up suckers from the root base which are also easily removed.
Control Pests
Problems and pests? Ferns, fortunately, have few. Poor ventilation will sometimes allow the fungus to make brown or ashy spots on the fronds; fresh air is a simple cure.
In too-dry air, several kinds of scale (somewhat hard-shelled sucking insects) can thrive—but here, a caution.
The spores from which ferns reproduce instead of seeds also look hard and shiny and are located on the underside of the fronds — which is where the pesky scales take refuge. You can easily tell which is which.
Spores are almost always arranged in some neat, orderly pattern; scales have no such method in their madness.
Scales can be dislodged with your fingernail or a strong water spray at the kitchen sink — but check frequently for several weeks to ensure they left no babies to grow up.
Mild solutions of special “scalecides” (read the label to find out whether the preparation is effective against a scale or look for ingredients like malathion) should be prepared with warm water and sprayed particularly underneath the fronds.
Let the treated fern stand for about a half hour, then wash it off with a water spray. Do not use aerosol or pressure cans on ferns.
Growing conditions for ferns are nearly the same as for many other rare and lovely plants, except that they do not require sun (which is often hard to provide) and are subject to fewer pests.
Now, let’s get acquainted with the many branches of the ferns’ family tree. Each group (genus) has some fairly outstanding differences from all the others, and in each group are varieties that also differ in some way.
Easiest-To-Grow Ferns
Asplenium Nidus
Asplenium nidus is an old favorite, dubbed bird’s nest fern for the nest-like arrangement or rosette of shiny, spreading, un-cut fronds. The fronds are thin and leathery, with a dark midrib and a permanently waved edge.
Cibotium
Cibotium is a group of graceful tree ferns that may grow somewhat large for a house. C. schiedei is often seen in florists’ arrangements; its much-divided fronds are dainty but durable. The Hawaiian C. chamissoi has a softer texture and fine hairs on the stalks.
Cyrtomium Falcatum
Cyrtomium falcatum is the botanical name for the old-time holly fern—one of the easiest to grow indoors. Fronds are durable, leathery, shiny, dark green, and cut or crinkled much like the holly.
Davallias
The davallias have hairy or scaly rhizomes that creep over the soil and look like paws at the tip. D. fijiensis is fittingly known as the rabbit’s-foot fern; its variety plumosa is a somewhat more dainty, dwarf version. Either may lose its fronds in winter dormancy.
Not so, D. griffithiana, a naturally epiphytic species with white, shiny scales on the rhizome and bluish fronds; nor leather-leaf D. solida; nor carrot fern, D. tenuifolia. These are some of the most satisfactory houseplants.
Nephrolepis
The Nephrolepis are generally called sword ferns for the much-divided fronds which taper to a sharp point.
Many new varieties are discovered or hybridized every year, particularly the N. exaltata types.
The favorite Boston fern is N. exaltata bostoniensis which is available in the original or a more compact, dwarf version.
N. exaltata elegantissima and hilli are fairly new and frillier versions. Also available are Lacy N. exaltata smithii, drooping Verona, and arching, open whitmani.
Platycerium
Platycerium is a family of easy-to-grow, epiphytic staghorn ferns, so called because the fertile fronds have horn-like lobes or forks. P. bifurcatum is most readily available. New on the market are P. alcicorne majus, grande, and balfouriana.
These ferns grow happily in sphagnum or osmunda tucked in the hollow of driftwood or wired tightly to a slab of cedar or cork.
The cupped, sterile fronds on the slab form a shield that holds water and nourishes decaying vegetation.
Polypodium
Polypodium is another group with feet at the end of the creeping rhizome.
- P. aureum, the hare’s-foot fern, has thin, metallic green fronds
- Its variety mandaianum has crested bluish fronds
- Smaller, durable P. aureum glaucum looks silvery blue underneath.
- Polypodium polypodioides is the amazing resurrection fern that revives from a completely dry ball.
Polystichum
The polystichum have triangular fronds and are quite hardy in the house. P. aculeatum, called hedge fern, produces bulblets that develop into young plants — one of the easiest of all to grow.
P. adiantiforme, nicknamed leather fern, has dense clusters and spreads, like the davallias, by a furry rhizome.
Low, spreading P. setosum gives a bristly effect. P. tsussimense, often listed as an aspidium, is a dwarf suitable for terrariums.
Pteris
The pteris—table or brake ferns— are quite happy in home growing conditions, and several are small enough for dish gardens. In the Pteris cretica group are:
- Low, variegated albolineata
- Crested parkeri
- Dense-growing wilsoni
- Rivertoniana
- Wimsetti
Pteris ensiformis is more slender; its elegant variety, victoriae, has rich green leaflets banded with silvery white.
Finely divided Pteris semipinnata is also new; P. serrulata is the old favorite Chinese brake fern; and contrary to its name, P. tremula looks trembly but grows robust.
Some other miniatures give a delightfully airy effect to a terrarium:
- Adiantum bellum and caudatum
- Asplenium viviparum
- Pellaea rotundifolia with its perfectly round, button-like leaflets
44659 by Bernice Brilmayer