Exotic Fern Group

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Exotic Fern Group

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The plant society for people passionate about ferns. The EFG is a worldwide community for enthusiasts of tropical, subtropical and indoor ferns.

A charitable incorporated organisation registered in England & Wales. Charity no. 1219251. Explore your passion for ferns with the Exotic Fern Group. Connect, learn, grow.

05/11/2026

Happy Fern Friday! 🌿

Every Friday, we celebrate the incredible world of ferns and their allies—and we want to see yours! Want us to share your plants?

How to get featured:

1️⃣ Post a photo or share a story of your favorite fern or fern ally today.

2️⃣ Tag and mention .fern.group.

3️⃣ We’ll do our best to reshare and celebrate your post!

Who are we? 🗺️

The Exotic Fern Group: The society for people passionate about ferns. We unite a vibrant, global community of pteridologists and fern lovers from all corners of the globe.

Why join our free global network?

✨ Free Community Membership – Open to everyone, everywhere.

📖 Digital Resources – Instant access to articles, guides, and events.

🤝 Grow Together – Connect with passionate growers worldwide.

📲 Ready to dive in? Click the link in our bio to join us today!

📷 Picture shows: Microgramma reptans growing in the Princess of Wales Conservatory at Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, United Kingdom 🌱

🔗 Look up this fern of the EFG data platform Pteridobase: https://pteridobase.org/taxon/5955/

The Exotic Fern Group is a charitable incorporated organisation registered in England & Wales. Charity no. 1219251

05/11/2026

Unfurling original botanical art. 🌿✨

Our new Artist Collection features stunning work by independent creators. This t-shirt showcases a print of Hayley Wylie Thurrat’s oil painting ‘In The Damp Bower’. It captures a Dicksonia antarctica growing in the Tropical Ravine at Belfast Botanic Garden. Hayley is horticulturist and artist.

Every single penny of profit goes straight back into supporting our conservation and educational work.

Wear original art, support independent artists and support our charity’s mission. Tap the link in our bio to grab yours.

03/11/2026

Unfurling original botanical art. 🌿✨

Our new Artist Collection features stunning work by independent creators. This Cyathea t-shirt showcases an original linocut design by horticulturist and artist Hayley Wylie Thurrat capturing a Sphaeropteris cooperi crozier unfurling in the Tropical Ravine at Belfast Botanic Garden.

Every single penny of profit goes straight back into supporting our conservation and educational work.

Wear original art, support independent artists and support our charity’s mission. Tap the link in our bio to grab yours.

03/11/2026

Look at this! Cyclopeltis crenata growing behind-the-scenes in the Tropical Nursery at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the United Kingdom 🌱Kew Gardens

🌿 Join a dedicated worldwide community for anyone passionate about ferns—and membership is completely free.

🔗 Become a community member today: exoticferngroup.org/join (Link in bio)

🔗 Look up this fern of the EFG data platform Pteridobase: https://pteridobase.org/taxon/9221/

01/11/2026

EFG Pteridology Prize 2026: Joint Winners Announced! 🌿

We are thrilled to reveal the results of this year’s EFG Pteridology Prize. Following an exceptional standard of entries showcasing incredible dedication to fern study, cultivation and research, our judges reached a unanimous decision to award joint winners for 2026!

Huge congratulations to our joint winners:

🌿 Kevin Bannon – From Decant to Replanting: the Fern Collection at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

Kevin is a Senior Glasshouse Horticulturist at RBGE caring for nearly 600 display plants in the historic Palm Houses and tropical propagation glasshouses. His work has supported the large-scale decant, relocation and replanting of major living collections during the Edinburgh Biomes Project.

🌿 Víctor M. Saldarriaga V. – Ferns and Lycophytes of El Romeral (Colombia): From Floristic Research to an Illustrated Field Guide.

Víctor is a biologist from the Universidad de Antioquia focusing on the taxonomy, biogeography and conservation of ferns and lycophytes. He combines field research, herbarium studies and macrophotography to document plant diversity across montane forest and páramo ecosystems.

A sincere thank you to our panel of judges for their expertise, as well as all of our entrants and shortlisted authors for sharing such inspiring work with us. We look forward to sharing select work from our shortlisted authors throughout 2027!

Both winning articles will be available online with our next newsletter and featured in Volume 5 of our journal, The Glasshouse.

🔗 Head to the link in our bio for full details on the winners and details on how to subscribe to our newsletter.

31/10/2026

🌿🎃 Grand Finale of our creepy botanical countdown featuring 5 spooky, weird and eerie fern species to haunt your feed!

🌕 THE INVISIBILITY SPELL
Happy Halloween! Want the power to turn invisible tonight? Shakespeare’s characters certainly thought so—claiming in Henry IV, “We have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible.”

📜 The Myth: Medieval folklore insisted that under a magical moon, bracken produced microscopic, invisible seeds. Catching them as they fell into a silver bowl was said to grant invisibility, reveal hidden treasure, and let you speak the language of animals!

🔬 The Reality: We now know ferns don’t produce seeds at all—they reproduce via microscopic spores! While bracken naturally produces defense chemicals to deter grazing animals in the wild, its true biological marvel is global dominance: it ranks among the most widespread plant species on Earth, conquering almost every continent except Antarctica.

Would you search the moonlit woods tonight to catch a magical fern spore, or leave this global survivor undisturbed? 🌌🕸️

📷 Photograph by Mick Garratt / Geograph Britain and Ireland, CC BY-SA 2.0

30/10/2026

🌿🎃 Day 4 of our creepy botanical countdown featuring 5 spooky, weird and eerie fern species to haunt your feed!

👻 BOTANICAL APPARITION
Meet the Ghost Fern (Athyrium ‘Ghost’)—a plant that looks like it drifted straight out of a haunted woodland.

With pale, icy silver-white fronds that appear to shimmer in low light, this striking plant seems to cast its own spectral glow in the deepest shadows of the garden.

🕯️ A Botanical Phantom? Traditionally considered a cross between the Japanese Painted Fern (Anisocampium niponicum) and the Lady Fern (Athyrium filix-femina), reclassification of the former into Anisocampium technically makes this an intergeneric hybrid. Yet, no formal botanical description for this hybrid seems to have been published... Was it ever real, or was it just a horticultural apparition? 👻

Would you plant this spectral enigma in your garden, or is it a little too haunting? 🕸️

🦇 HAPPY FERN FRIDAY! Tag and mention Exotic Fern Group and our spectral spirits will do their absolute best to resurrect and repost your posts! 🧟‍♂️📸

29/10/2026

🌿🎃 Day 3 of our creepy botanical countdown featuring 5 spooky, weird, and eerie fern species to haunt your feed!

🦇 CREATURES OF THE NIGHT
Is that a swarm of bats taking flight, or just the Batwing Fern (Histiopteris incisa)?

Native to shadowy, damp forests in the Southern Hemisphere, this unique fern gets its name from its paired pinnules that together unmistakably resemble the shape of a bat spreading its wings in flight.

🌑 Shadowy Colonies: Thriving in deep gullies and creeping over decaying logs in dark forest understories, it quickly creates vast, eerie carpets beneath the canopy.
If you could design a haunted goth garden, would this bat-shaped beauty be at the top of your list? 🦇🕸️

📷 Photo via Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 (Author Unknown). Cropped and border added.

28/10/2026

🌿🎃 Day 2 of our creepy botanical countdown featuring 5 spooky, weird and eerie fern species to haunt your feed!

🐍 SLITHERING FROM THE FOREST FLOOR

This isn’t a serpent in the grass—it’s the Adder’s-Tongue Fern (Ophioglossum vulgatum).

Unlike traditional ferns with lacy, divided fronds, Adder’s-Tongue sprouts a single smooth leaf paired with a creepy, spike-like spore stalk that looks eerily like the fanged, flicking tongue of a viper.

🧙‍♀️ Witchcraft & Folklore: In medieval herbalism, its snake-like appearance bound it to shadowy woodland potions, serpent lore and whispers of deceit. Folk tradition claimed that anything shaped like a viper’s tongue held hidden venom and dark magic.
Would you be brave enough to forage for one of these serpent-like plants in the dark woods? 🐍🕸️

📷 Photo by Orchi via Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0. Cropped and border added.

27/10/2026

🌿🎃 Welcome to our creepy botanical countdown: 5 spooky, weird, and eerie fern species to haunt your feed all week long!

🧟‍♂️ BOTANICAL ZOMBIES: BACK FROM THE DEAD!

We’re kicking things off with the ultimate undead plant: the Resurrection Fern (Pleopeltis polypodioides).

During dry spells, this epiphytic fern can lose up to 95% of its water content—an amount that would instantly kill almost any other plant. It shrivels into a crisp, brown husk and can stay completely dormant in this “dead” state for years.

💧 The Reanimation: The moment a rainstorm hits, it drinks up the moisture, uncurls, and springs back to vibrant, lush green life in just a few short hours!

A few other fern species share this incredible desiccation ability and nothing beats seeing it happen in person. Have you ever seen a fern come back from the dead? 🕸️👻

Photo by a.dombrowski / CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons (cropped and border added)

Address

South Yarra, VIC

Website

http://exoticferngroup.org/

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