The other common evergreen seen in the neighborhood and along Towson Run is the christmas fern. It has two associations with the season. It is still green into Christmas and the leaflets or pinnae have the shape of Santa's boot or the fireplace stocking. The internet has a nice key for Maryland ferns but there is not much for the forager except for the Ostrich fern, but no fall fiddleheads. It is mainly the ostrich fiddlehead which is considered a delicacy. But the Christmas fern is sometimes grown just for the winter color not nourishment. The best foragers can say is that it may not kill you. References do say there is protein in these winter fronds, enough to sustain deer at yet they are not heavily browsed.
The identification is by the growth pattern, single scattered clumps and not colonies or by the overall leaf shape whether tapered or semi-tapered. Finally it is "once cut". Mother nature took one scissor cut between pinnae. She sometimes cuts again at right angles, twice cut, and sometimes one more cut at right angles to that making "thrice cut". The fruit bearing fronds have died back leaving the sterile fronds for the winter. It is native to the east coast of the United States. It likes shade to partial shade.
I will try to get a close up of the leaflet, at a distance in looks smooth or entire but the description is a finely serrated edge. Meanwhile the sensitive ferns at the corner of Cloverlea have disappeared at the first frost and the ostrich fern is just the black residual fruiting bodies.
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| Close-up of the boot leaflets,thorns may prevent browse? |
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| Christmas fern green in December and boot leaflets |
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| An unknown twice cut fern,imagine paper scissors at right angles |
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