Evergreen Wood Fern, Dryopteris intermedia
At Fresh Pond it is easy to recognize this fern in the winter: it is one of two species that stays green year-round. The other is the Christmas Fern, Polystichum acrostichoides, which has a very different appearance. Evergreen Wood Fern is a lacy fern that forms a neat round rosette and, like the Spinulose Wood Fern, produces spores on the back of the fronds. The best way to distinguish Evergreen from Spinulose is to look at the bottom pinnules of the bottom pinnae. In both species the downward-pointing pinnules are longer than the upward pointing ones. But in Spinulose Ferns the pinnule that is closes to the rachis (stem) is longer than the one next to it. In Evergreen Ferns it is the opposite: The innermost downward pointing pinnule is shorter than the one next to it.