Polystichum acrostichoides George Forrest pinnate leaves along dense

pinnate leaves along dense

flowering in August and September and sometimes later still

In spring the new growth comes up like asparagus or young bamboo

the airy spring bloom

Polystichum acrostichoides George Forrest pinnate leaves along denseFor a plant this common, the Christmas fern carries an oddly specific origin for the name. The fern was christened, the story goes, by one John Robinson, a botany professor at the Peabody Academy in Salem, Massachusetts, sometime in the late 1800s, and set down for posterity in a 1923 volume with the irreproachable title The Fern Lover's Companion. Robinson's reasoning was seasonal. When the other ferns of the eastern woods go brown and crisp at the