Field Guide

Marginal shield fern is an evergreen fern with scaly rhizomes and leaf stalks. It grows in bouquet-like clusters on shaded ledges of sandstone bluffs and rock outcrops.

Ebony spleenwort is a common forest-floor fern with wiry, shiny, dark brown leaf stalks and a ladderlike series of dark green, narrowly oblong leaflets.

The leaves of sensitive fern usually wither quickly upon the first frost, leaving the upright, beadlike, spore-bearing spikes to be noticeable.

Maidenhair ferns are distinctive and beautiful. Their leaflet veins divide by twos over and over, forming a fan pattern.

Christmas fern is one of the most common ferns in Missouri woodlands. Its leathery leaves are evergreen, and pioneers used it for making Christmas wreaths.

Smooth cliff brake is almost always seen growing out of an exposed limestone or dolomite bluff or rock. Its fronds, with blue-gray, lance-shaped, ovate, or oblong leaflets, are not very fernlike.

Lowland brittle fern, also called southern fragile fern, is an easily recognized species. It’s a common springtime sight in moist forest soils.

Broad beech fern has broadly triangular leaves that tilt backward from their long, upright stalks. Wings of leafy tissue connect the main leaf lobes along the main axis, and the bottommost lobes usually point downward.

Bracken is a fern found nearly worldwide. Its 2–3 times compound leaves are triangular in outline and arise singly from the underground creeping rhizome.

Rattlesnake fern rises from the ground with a single stalk. A lacy-cut, bright green fern leaf is stalkless at its tip. At the same joint, a single upright stalk arises that bears clusters of tiny ball-shaped spore cases.