Flora of New Zealand Series

male fern

Rhizomes stout, erect, often covered in dead stipe bases. Stipes 10-40 cm long, pale brown. Stipes and rachises sparsely covered with pale brown scales. Laminae elliptic or narrowly elliptic, 2-pinnate, 30-125 × 15-30 cm, dark green above, paler below. Primary pinnae in 25-50 (or more) pairs, narrowly triangular or ± oblong, tapering at apices, sessile, 8-15 × 2-3 cm. Secondary pinnae in 15-30 pairs, oblong, adnate or decurrent on pinna midrib, rounded at apices, serrate all round, to 15 × 7 mm, the secondary pinnae on the basal pair of primary pinnae ± equal in length either side of midrib. Sori round, 1-5 pairs on each secondary pinna, often confined to upper pinnae, covered by flat reniform indusia.

N.: S. Auckland (Hamilton), Gisborne (Motu Bush), Wellington City; S.: Marlborough (Wairau Mountains and Goose Bay), Canterbury (frequent in lowland and lower montane areas to 750 m), Otago (Dunedin, Otago Peninsula, Clutha Valley), Southland (Underwood Bush).

Europe, Asia, N. America 1958

Cemeteries, road and railway banks, drains, streamsides, open scrub, damp forest.

D. filix-mas is easily the most common of the 3 Dryopteris spp. in N.Z. It can be an aggressive coloniser and appears to be spreading rapidly in the E. lowlands and hill country of the South Id. Only in Dunedin is it replaced to a significant extent by D. affinis.