Hardys Cottage Garden Plants
Blechnum spicant
Blechnum spicant
Low stock: 5 left
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Plants are dispatched in growing condition and may not be in full flower. If too tall to pack safely, we may cut them back — this helps them establish more quickly. Read our Mail Order FAQs.
A neat, tufted evergreen fern native to the UK and widespread across Europe, Blechnum spicant — Hard Fern — is one of the most distinctive of our native ferns. Its fronds are simply pinnate, with paired pinnae arranged directly opposite each other in a characteristic herringbone pattern, tapering at both tip and base.
Like all Blechnum, it is dimorphic: the sterile fronds are long, flat and leathery, arching outwards close to the ground in a spreading rosette of deep, glossy green; the fertile fronds rise from the centre of the plant, narrower and more erect, with the pinnae spaced further apart and their edges rolled inwards on the undersides. It thrives in moist, humus-rich, acid to neutral soil in partial or full shade — equally at home in woodland, on heathland, or alongside a stream.
Height × Spread: 50cm × 50cm