FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

This is a Pteris cretica, or Cretan brake fern. It's native to Asia, Europe, and Africa. It's not especially unusual, but the circumstances in which I got it are weird. I live in central AZ and I was out collecting some wild mosses a couple of years ago. I put the mosses in a pot where they are doing pretty good, and this past spring this fern started sprouting. There are no houses or nurseries anywhere near where I harvested the moss. I can't imagine how the spores got there, but with daily misting it's thriving as an indoor plant.

Well, for starters, you may have had spores in the media. Then, too, considering how small spores are, there is the chance that they were simply carried on the wind and just happened the last long enough to be still viable when they landed on your media, or in the mass that you harvested.

That is quite cool. Up here in the PNW ferns of various species just "pop up" where ever they like. I have several on the NE corner of my house that just appeared there, along with some Ivy.

Reminds me of the "fern urn" I once had. It was an urn of moss with some violets in it to add color, but then some ferns appeared and began taking over. Eventually they became the bulk of the urn's contents. It was left behind during the move, however.

Ferns do seem to get around. What surprised me about this one is that they're not native to AZ (or the US) and there are very few species of ferns in my area. The length of time (>1 year) from when I gathered the wild moss and the sprouting of the fern is another oddity.