Does the Leatherleaf Fern Produce Flowers?

Habitat

• Leatherleaf fern is an evergreen perennial in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 9 through 11, where it grows up to three feet tall and wide. A performer in the shade garden, leatherleaf fern spreads to form a matted groundcover of lacy fronds. If you live outside its hardiness zones, you can grow leatherleaf fern indoors but the hot air from heating vents may scorch the edges of the leaves and pots restrict its lateral growth.

Flowerless Characteristics

• Flowers are not merely aesthetic adornments on plants; they allow a plant to reproduce sexually. After the flowers are fertilized, they produce seeds which grow into new plants after they successfully germinate. As a flowerless plant, leatherleaf fern can still reproduce sexually, but it does this by producing spores instead of seeds and maturing through a bi-generational life cycle. Leatherleaf fern can also reproduce asexually by multiplying itself along horizontal stems, called rhizomes, which run parallel to the ground.

Sexual Propagation

• Leatherleaf fern produces spores on the backs of its pinnae, or leaflets. The spores are clustered together as sporangia and protected by a cap called an indusium. At maturity, the indusium bursts open, and the spores are ejected forcefully. If they land on a moist, favorable surface, the spores germinate into second-generation plants called prothalli that do not resemble their parent fern. Prothalli contain male sexual organs that fertilize the female reproductive structures. If fertilization is successful, the prothalli develop into the recognizable leatherleaf fern fronds and the life cycle is complete.

Asexual Propagation

• As leatherleaf fern rhizomes spread horizontally along the ground, they produce roots underneath and shoots above. The new shoots form initially as fiddleheads, which are tightly coiled fronds that gradually unfurl as the shoot matures. If you allow the fern to spread naturally, it forms a dense mat of clumped fronds. You can divide a clump and make new plants by cutting through the rhizomes and dividing into sections that contain roots. Each section with roots can be replanted to grow into a new fern.