Agree, also I don't think there is another species that looks like that in GA. A more recent name for it is Diphasiastrum digitatum.

I live outside of Atlanta and have ferns in my wooded damp backyard. I no longer cover them to protect the new growth during the late freezes that we get. They grow right back. I plant ferns anytime during the year - it doesn't seem to matter. My biggest challange is finding their favorite spots in the yard. I can plant 3 of the same ferns in different areas and one may thrive while the others eventually die out. Some varieties just don't like our soil/weather and they die out in a couple of seasons. The best luck I've had with non-native ferns is Autumn Fern. It must love our soil and weather. No matter where I plant them they grow very well they stay stately and green all winter. Good luck on your fern garden

I'd be surprised if you can get them to do well as a houseplant in Washington state, or as in indoor in winter and outdoors in summer container plant. They really want and need 80F plus temperatures to grow well, along with bright sun, and if you can't give them sufficient heat and light in the warm months, they just tend to struggle along. Your best bet may be growing them in a south facing enclosed sunporch, if it has great light and warms up into the low 80'sF during the day. Speaking from experience, they are marginal even here in the San Francisco Bay Area in areas closest to the ocean/bay, yet can do surprisingly well in more inland valleys or places like Sacramento, Fresno, Bakersfield, etc if summered outdoors as a container plant, and forced into dormancy in a protected spot indoors in winter. They barely bloom at all by the very end of summer here in Berkeley/Oakland outdoors, but I have seen thriving plants in a San Francisco enclosed west facing glassed in sunporch, which did bloom regularly. They are very prone to getting scale and/or mealybugs if they are suffering from lack of proper heat, so be aware that you may have to constantly battle these. I wouldn't think they would do all that well west of the Cascades, maybe better in the inland, hotter summer areas. They will definitely tend to rot out even here in the SF Bay Area if left outside and rained upon in winter. If you can give them the sustained heat in the warmer months that they prefer,(and this includes at night), they are perfectly fine even with dull sunless winters, when they can be allowed to go dormant and leafless, and just barely watered once a month.

With a good layer of leaves as mulch and not trimming down the the branches until February or March, my pineapple sage returned for 4 years (until I forgot to mulch it and we had an extremely cold winter!) That was in zone 7a with occasional lows down to 9 degrees. It does take them a long time to show life in the spring - sometimes it is juts easier to buy a new one. In years that I've bought a new one after I've given up and of course the next week the old one showed some life, they both end up about the same size and would bloom at the same time. Good luck!