Tall twice-divided fronds in a symmetrical shuttlecock, the stalk thick with pale-brown papery scales
Male fern — the commonest big deciduous fern of British woods.
Nature · Ferns, grasses & other plants
Male fern
Deciduous fern · fronds to 1.5 m
Dryopteris filix-mas — Dryopteridaceae
The male fern is the classic shuttlecock fern of British woodland: a tall, symmetrical funnel of twice-divided fronds rising from a stout crown, the old stalk bases piled around it like a pedestal. It was named not for any sex but by contrast with the finer, more delicate lady fern. Its rhizome supplied the standard European treatment for tapeworm until modern drugs replaced it, and is poisonous in overdose.
How to spot them
- ▸A neat shuttlecock crown with every frond rising from one point, unlike bracken's scattered fronds
- ▸Fronds twice divided, the leaflets blunt-tipped and toothed, tapering only slightly at the base
- ▸Stalk densely clothed in pale-brown papery scales, thickest near the base
- ▸Round spore heaps each under a kidney-shaped flap (a reniform indusium)
- ▸Dies back in autumn, unlike the evergreen hart's-tongue and polypody
How to know it
Its English name distinguishes it from a finer relative whose Latin epithet means 'woman-fern'
Male fern (filix-mas), set against lady fern, Athyrium filix-femina; the contrast is aesthetic, not sexual.
An extract of its rhizome, filicin, was the standard European vermifuge against tapeworm, and blinds in overdose
Male fern.
Round spore heaps sit under kidney-shaped flaps on the underside of each leaflet
Male fern — reniform indusia are typical of its genus.
Its genus name means 'oak fern', from the woodland it favours
Dryopteris, from Greek drys (oak) and pteris (fern).
Its nearest look-alike, separated by a dark spot where each leaflet joins the midrib, is the scaly version of it
Male fern, against scaly male fern, Dryopteris affinis.
Quick-fire facts
- •Filix-mas means 'male fern'; the name contrasts it with lady fern, Athyrium filix-femina, not with a female plant
- •Ferns have no male and female individuals in the flowering-plant sense; sexes occur on the tiny separate prothallus
- •The genus Dryopteris means 'oak fern', from the Greek drys
- •The rhizome yields filicin, used against tapeworm from classical times until modern anthelmintics replaced it; overdose can cause blindness
- •Sori are round and each covered by a kidney-shaped indusium, a key feature of the genus
- •Deciduous, though fronds often persist half-collapsed and green into early winter in mild years
- •Dryopteris is a notoriously difficult genus in Britain, with scaly male fern and the buckler ferns close by
- •Very widespread across Europe, Asia and North America, and naturalised well beyond
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Sources
- The Wildlife Trusts — Male-fern