The only native British fern with completely undivided, strap-shaped fronds
Hart's-tongue fern.
Nature · Ferns, grasses & other plants
Hart's-tongue fern
Evergreen fern · fronds 20–60 cm
Asplenium scolopendrium — Aspleniaceae
The hart's-tongue is the one native British fern whose fronds are not divided at all: glossy, strap-shaped and bright green, rising in a shuttlecock from a shady bank or the mortar of an old wall. It is a lime-lover and an ancient-woodland indicator, thickest in the damp limestone woods of the west. Turn a frond over and the spore cases run out in bold parallel bars like the legs of a centipede.
How to spot them
- ▸Undivided strap-shaped fronds — no other native British fern has them
- ▸Heart-shaped (cordate) lobes where the blade meets the stalk, and a wavy margin
- ▸Spore cases in long parallel herringbone bars across the underside
- ▸Evergreen and glossy through winter, in a shuttlecock rosette
- ▸Shaded banks, well shafts, limestone woods and old mortared walls, especially in the west
How to know it
Its species epithet is Greek for centipede, from the ranks of spore cases on the underside
Asplenium scolopendrium — from skolopendra, a centipede.
Its English name likens the frond to part of the mouth of a mature male red deer
Hart's-tongue fern — a 'hart' is a mature male red deer.
A strong calcicole that thrives in the mortar of old walls and down well shafts
Hart's-tongue fern — it wants lime.
Stays glossy green all winter in a shuttlecock rosette while bracken and male fern die back
Hart's-tongue fern.
Its genus name means 'without spleen', from an old belief that it relieved disorders of that organ
Asplenium — the spleenworts.
Victorian fern-collecting mania produced hundreds of crested and frilled cultivars of this one plant
Hart's-tongue fern; the craze was pteridomania.
Quick-fire facts
- •The only native British fern with entire, undivided fronds
- •Scolopendrium is from the Greek skolopendra, a centipede, describing the parallel rows of sori
- •Asplenium means 'without spleen': a doctrine-of-signatures name, the spleenworts being held to relieve the organ
- •A strong calcicole, commonest on limestone and chalk and on lime-mortared walls
- •An ancient-woodland indicator plant over much of Britain
- •Evergreen: old fronds persist through winter and are replaced in spring
- •Victorian pteridomania bred hundreds of crested, forked and frilled forms, many still in cultivation
- •Formerly placed in its own genus, as Phyllitis scolopendrium
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Sources
- Woodland Trust — Hart's tongue fern (Asplenium scolopendrium)