Dryopteris remota 25/12 Restock knitting into a tidy mound

knitting into a tidy mound at a shaded path

in keeping a living fossil alive

the shrub fruits on the current year's growth

Much of the decline traces to the loss of fire

a range that has produced reasonable cold hardiness for the genus

Dryopteris remota 25/12 Restock knitting into a tidy moundDryopteris remota, the remote wood fern or scaly buckler fern, is one of those quiet accidents of nature that turns out better than anything a breeder set out to make. The fern is a naturally occurring hybrid between the scaly male fern, Dryopteris affinis, of western Europe and the British Isles, and the broad buckler fern, Dryopteris expansa, of cooler northern woods. From the affinis parent the hybrid took shaggy stalks thickly clothed in golden