Yeah, I keep hearing people say Lygodium palmatum is difficult but I think they try to grow it in normal soil. In a bog garden it grows great. I heard somewhere it was the first species of plant in the U.S. to have a conservation policy enacted to protect it. I don't know if that's true or not.

Although I love those native ferns, I have to admit that autumn fern holds up better for me all year long. (Dryopteris erythrosora; not native and the only non-native fern I really like.)It is wintergreen, grows 18-24", and needs shade mostly. Last year I bought some at the MG plant sale and watered only when I planted them; yes, even through our terrible drought. They did not grow much, but only one out of 12 died, and that one was the victim of critter digging. D. marginalis is also wintergreen and, once established, can go a while without water. Christmas fern, Polystichum acrostichoides, doesn't seem to need much water once established butnot as "ferny" as the others. Oh, none of these "run" as Ostrich. Esh, Southern Wood comes up so late for me that I always think it is dead..and then in June it appears. I guess you are further south, so it performs better for you. Royal fern performs better for me than Cinnamon, but both are fine near water. All of my favorite spreaders are not evergreen and are low-growing. Oh, the MG are selling ferns again right now. If you are near Greensboro, call 336-375-5876. They have more on their list than I can tell you about.

A couple things worth mentioning... My preferred fern spore medium so far is a potting mix called "Metro-Mix 360". It's fairly sterile already, so further sterilization isn't really necessary. Agar's good for a few species, but there's a lot of stuff that just won't grow well on it. The things I know do well on it are the climbing ferns (genus Lygodium) and Ceratopteris. The things I know don't do well on it are all the members of Pteridaceae that I've tried. With regards to jello, the main reason I can think of not to use it is that it has a low melting temperature, just above room temperature; stick it under fluorescent lights with spores on it for a few weeks and I figure you've got 50/50 odds at best of getting happy little gametophytes growing on gelatin rather than just a puddle with half-germinated spores floating around in it. Rather than the lab-grade expensive agar, you can also get food-grade agar at some oriental food places and so forth for much cheaper. How long they take varies greatly with species and conditions. Under banks of fluorescent lights on agar, you can get Lygodium to go from spore to sporophyte in a couple weeks less than a semester. On a north-facing windowsill in Metro-Mix I got some Wright's cliffbrake (Pellaea wrightiana) to go from spore to sporophyte in a couple of weeks. Generally, for good development you want bright indirect light and temps in the low-mid 70's. Lower temperatures might not be a problem, but I know that either high temperatures or direct sunlight (which presumably causes high temps) cause major problems. Patrick Alexander

Oh yes, they are native plants and very beautiful. Naturally there are many more beautiful native plants than the ones I've mentioned. Butterfly weed is one my favorites (and I've never had it self sow on me, unfortunately). The point of this post was to show some of the ones that people comment on. But I'm glad for people to share their favorites. If you rescued them from around here, then they may have been native to your area at one point also. They just disappeared during human settlement of the area. For example, I find bigleaf magnolia on every Cherokee County site on which we rescue, north/south/east/west. Yet at the two places I've lived in Cherokee County, they were not in evidence. Curious. Thanks for sharing a picture of your fringe tree, Jeff. I cannot take credit for my pictures, they were all found on the web. It's nice to see such a mature one. I'm sure it stops traffic! Vroomp, here's the foliage on Bird's Food Violet (one of my favorites):