Common oak fern (Gymnocarpium dryopteris)

Fern family (Dryopteridaceae)

Longlived fern reaching 5-40 cm in height, with a thin, black rhizome. Leaves grow up singly. Leaf stalk 2-3 times as long as blade. Blades delicate, triangular in outline, manifesting third-order branching. Lower sections of 1st-order leaves have stalks almost as long as remaining part of blade. Sori small, roundish. Produces spores in Jul.-Aug.

Grows on mesic, moderately fertile soils. Occurs in shady broadleaved and mixed forest, as well as in spruce forest. Often also in oak-lime-hornbeam and mixed oak/spruce forest.

Descriptions devised by the team at the Independent Department of Forest Botany, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, i.e. L. Witkowska-Żuk, K. Marciszewska, W. Ciurzycki, A. Obidziński and P. Zaniewski.