Hi Heather.

I have had the purple-stemmed Osmunda, r. purpurascens, growing in a pot for around three years now. It does need plenty of moisture so I keep a saucer underneath it all the time to retain water. It does reasonably well and grows up to about 2 foot or so high by 4 foot wide in the summer. I assume it would get rather larger in open ground.

I intend to re-pot it as soon as weather conditions permit. You can come and see it if you like although Osmundas don't look much a this yime of year!

Osmunda regalis doesn't flourish (ferns don't flourish, or bloom) ;-) It is called Royal or Flowering Fern because its fertile fronds look like flowers (picture ).

Anyway, I'm not sure these "flowers" - I mean these fertile fronds - only depend on the growing conditions, I would be inclined to think it's also a question of age/maturity of the plant.

As for its watering needs, it certainly enjoys a moist (but not water-logged) soil during the growing season but, in my experience, does also well in a very good garden soil whith plenty of humus (leaf mould is the best). In the wild, it's a bank plant, not an aquatic plant, which means the water runs down, its roots don't sit in water.

I grow half a dozen of them and the oldest one (picture and {{gwi:239413}}) is about 8 years old. It grows in full sun (but they do like a bit of shade) in an acidic, moist and plenty of humus, rich garden soil.

They can become quite big indeed, old specimens can reach more than 2m (that would be 6.5 feet) high and wide, but that's in the wild or with very good growing conditions... and time. They take time to settle/establish, can make huge rootballs that are not so easy to transplant and, in my humble opinion, will always do better in the ground than in a pot - even a very large one.

If you can dig a big hole, amend it with leaf mould, replant it, mulch again with leaves, water it for the first couple of years, mulch with more leaf mould each spring and give it time (plenty of time), I think it's worth it. It's such a magnificent plant.

Olivier.

I should hope it does flourish!

"Flourish: to grow well or luxuriantly; thrive"

Oops, I'm sorry, I thought to flourish meant to bloom (should have checked in my old Harrap's). Please excuse me.

Olivier.

Well, your English is otherwise perfect, so you can be forgiven the occasional mistake!

Yes indeed, very impressive English. Um, ARE you English?

Robby Em, your Osmunda sounds about the right size for my garden. If it reaches 6' there wouldn't be much room left for anything else! I'd love to come and see it when it gets round to doing anything.

I think I'll be hedging my bets with some kind of pot, saves making a proper decision for another year.

Heather

It's a deal, once the weather warms up a bit!
I've been to Palmer's at Enderby today to get a larger pot for replanting purposes.

Robby.

Ooer, kinda pricey down there! I'm trying to rein in on the garden spending this year. Would you like an indigofera amblyantha or a descaisnea fargesii? Both seed-grown,weatherbeaten and a bit potbpound but will no doubt do. I'm also going to dig up some cephalaria gigantea, some of that purple-leafed lysimachia, gardener's garters, some bogstandard sedum and those big perennial sunflowers. So if you want any, drop us a line, I'm keen to get rid of it.

Salut Olivier. Haven't heard from you in a while.

ferns..
Polystichum braunii... Braun's Holly Fern -
Athyrium nipponicum 'Pictum'... Japanese Painted Fern
Matteuccia struthiopteris...Ostrich Fern
Adiantum pedatum... Maidenhair
etc..
http://www.image-dream.com/image.php?image=2268df8e4b3762cb1eabef0ad9aa7068.jpg&pseudo=anonym
http://www.image-dream.com/image.php?image=b304f4824431c9f66899b05891685162.jpg&pseudo=anonym
http://www.image-dream.com/image.php?image=54f60b1f6e8962a85b3f768e680de2bd.jpg&pseudo=anonym

What's the significance of that last post please?

GN/Heather.

Yes I agree, not cheap at Palmer's but the coffee's nice! And there's things to see and do undercover if you have non-gardeners in the party.

Thanks a lot for the plants offer, I've never even heard of some of those you mention. I'll be in touch shortly. I've quite a few grasses available if you want to do 'swapsies': Milium effusum Aureum and Stipa arundinacea for starters, and a few ferns.

Grow Osmunda from spores, if you want to save some money. You need to get in there quick, though  the spores only live for 48 hours (no, really). But if you can get them fresh, they're easy. I bake a lump of clay loam in the cooker for a couple of hours to sterilise it (it's actually better if there is not much organic matter in it, surprisingly, since it can denature badly and is not necessary for the health of the sporelings). You need to bake a clay pot, too, and irrigate your baked lump with boiled water. It's important for good sanitation to reduce the opportunity for mosses to germinate, which swamp fern gametophyte. Level the surface and sow the spores extremely thinly, and leave with a cover of cleaned and swabbed glass (with bleach) in bright but indirect light. They will germinate very quickly and the gametophyte (the sexual stage for ferns) will be visible in just a few weeks as heart-shaped green scales. Prick these out when they are showing their first true, mature leaves (sorry: fronds). Well-grown plants will be a foot high by the following summer, and you'll have millions of them.

I saw some Osmunda in the wild a few years ago, at Askham Bog SSSI, near York. A remarkable sight was the huge mounds of fibre they are apt to produce, consisting of ariel rhizoids presumably adapted to help the plant's aeration in its boggy environment. They were not growing on a water's edge but in marsh. It is the Osmunda's fibre which was its undoing for wild populations at the turn of the 20th century when it was much in demand as a growing medium for orchids, right until the 1970s (when most of it was imported from Italy). Many orchid growers still swear by it, but then they are the sort of growers who think nothing of importing wild specimens and cannot appreciate that epiphytic orchids will grow in anything as long as their watering needs are properly attended to (there, I'll get off my soapbox now).