Vegetable Fern

esculentum: edible, some use the young fronds as a vegetable.

Rhizome erect, often with a slendert caudex up to 0.5 (1)m × 6 cm; rhizome scales dark brown with black margins, up to 10 mm long, margins finely toothed; vegetatively spreading and forming colonies from root buds. Fronds large, tufted, erect. Stipe up to 6 cm long, grooved, pale brown above, darker and more scaly at the base. Lamina 2- to 3-pinnate, up to 0.85 m × 0.6 m, triangular in outline. Pinnules triangular-linear, variable in size, up to 8 × 2.5 cm, dark green, subsessile, very shallowly cut into lobes with rounded apices, margins toothed, glabrous above, but costules and veins below with scattered, pale brown scales; veins free or forked, basal 3-5 pairs of adjacent veins anastomosing below the sinus. Rhachis grooved, subglabrous with small light brown scales especially along the groove. Sori linear, set along most veins; indusium dark brown, thin, margins becoming uneven with age.

Native to Asia, naturalised in South Africa, Zimbabwe, USA, Australia.