g'day gen,

depending how small the plants are but from an early stage the shield frond will have a tendancy for the top of it to not cling to what ever it is you have it mounted to, or the top part will appear finger like. having said that in the end it won't matter to the plant for as it grows it will grow the right way up naturally i got a semi mature one at one stage and the owner had let it fall from the mounting and it hung upside down but the new fronds where growing the right way round and in no time you couldn't tell that it had been upside down.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

'Staghorn' is a name used rather indiscriminately for 2 native species of Platycerium, namely P. superbum and P. bifurcatum. Some people say the true staghorn is P. superbum and P. bifurcatum is elkhorn, other folks would have it the other way around (which to me makes more sense, if you compare the antlers of elks and stags).

If you do a Google image search of P. superbum, you will see that it can really only go one way up - though as Len says, if attached at a young enough stage it will probably right itself.

But P. bifurcatum has a different growth habit, maturing in the wild to a great round ball on the limb of forest tree, with tufts of fronds pointing in all directions. My guess is you could plant it any way up.

g'day tony,

just had a look at some elk and stag animal pics, and to me the p.bifurcatum elkhorn fern would more aptly match the elk's horn if you compare the secondry frond as i believe is the case, and like wise with some imagination the stag's horn resembles the secondry frond of the p. superbum stag horn, which for my life time is how they have always been named funnily enough though the only time i started to see any differing of that was when common names are turned around in the us of a gardening circles.

heaven to betsy next we'll be calling qld blues squash, they are well adopted common names for the sake of common gardeners lets keep it that way.

the stag that i got which was growing upside down had already developed secondry fronds, before it hung loose from its original mounting, so when i got it i had a choice do i put it back the way it was of leave it grow and leave it grow i did, adn with no confusion to me was as good a stag as i ever grew.

len

Thanks for the replies to date!!
I have 2 Platycerium superbum ** (staghorns). They have a little brown "skirt". In the spirit of dressing should this hang down?

** Cute name isn't it??

Cheers
Gen

g'day genny,

sounds like you mean the older brown/dead shield frond? yes where it has a tendancy to want to hug the mounting area that is the botton of the fern, the top tends to want to push away from the mounting so as to allow for the collection of organic matter from above and water to get to the middle of the plant, well in nature at least.

and how do you pronounce 'superbum'? ie.,. 'super - bum' or 'superb - um'? chuckle don't matter much realy still means the same the superb looking stag.

len