Green Mountain Maidenhair (Adiantum viridimontanum)
Maidenhair Fern family (Pteridaceae)
Green Mountain maidenhair is a delicate, small to medium-sized fern, reaching 2.5 ft tall and wide. Has short, scaly rhizomes and dark, shiny, wiry stems, which appear to divide into two recurving parts bearing the leaflets on the outer rim. It’s deciduous, arching to stiffly erect, fan-shaped, shiny fronds (leaves) have lobed triangular-long leaf segments. In the partial shade, their fronds grow circular or horseshoe-like with horizontal-laying leaf segments, but grow in a funnel-like shape with erect leaf segments in the full sun. The foliage sheds water. In the late summer and fall, spores are grouped into round sori on dark brown, oblong, false indusia on the underside’s margins of fertile fronds. The fertile fronds are more upright, rising above the sterile fronds, and are more triangular in shape. Found in northern Vermont and southern Quebec in rocky serpentine barrens which have very mineral-rich but shallow soil, road cuts, talus slopes, and cliffs. It thrives best in full sunlight. Its populations are widely isolated from each other. Only known from 21 sites.
Listed as Threatened in VT.
Copyright Brett Miley
