Online Virtual Flora of Wisconsin - Gymnocarpium dryopteris

Gymnocarpium dryopteris (L.) Newman

Family: Dryopteridaceae

common oak fern, western oak fern

[Dryopteris disjuncta (Rupr.) C.V.Morton, more...]

Christopher Noll

Kitty Kohout

Mary Ann Feist

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Etymology: Gymnocarpium: in part Greek for "naked"
Plants: perennial fern
Habitat: woods
Conservation Status: Native

Common in cool northern mesic to wet-mesic woods of mixed conifers and hardwoods, including sugar maple, yellow birch, hemlock, white pine, spruce, fir, white cedar, etc.; streambanks; margins of bogs and cedar swamps; base of talus slopes or on wet shaded rock ledges. The small thin triangular nearly horizontal blades are rather widely spaced on along slender long-creeping rhizomes. This species is a fertile tetraploid hybrid of G. appalachianum and G. disjunctum. It can hybridize with G. jessoense when these two species occur together, producing G. x intermedium and rarely with G. robertianum, producing G. x heterosporum - not known from Wisconsin. Gymnocarpium X intermedium has abortive small black malformed spores as well as brown spherical spores that can give rise to identical apogamous progeny.