Bracken/Fern

 As a newby, what is the difference between brackens & ferns?

As a matter of interest, a neighbour said what I had in the garden was
bracken - an invasive weed.
Now the boss is looking , in a nursery, for pots of something very similar,
marked up as ferns!

Colin

 On 02/10/2011 14:05, Colin Jackson wrote:

Simplest way is take a picture and post it online. But a rough guide is
that bracken typically has strong vertical stems with fern shaped leaves
right at the top whereas ferns come as single fern shaped leaves from
the ground with characteristic fractal shape. There are plenty of
exceptions but this should be good enough to see if you have bracken or
a common fern growing in your garden. Bracken isn't hard to control in a
domestic setting it is only a problem when there are acres of it.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 On 02/10/2011 14:05, Colin Jackson wrote:

I have always understood that fern are various plants that are common
wild in the UK, though there are of course "cultivated ones. I have
always considered bracken to be the dead dry fern, starting to develop
from the dying fern fronds around now.

--
Residing on low ground in North Staffordshire

 "Colin Jackson"  wrote

This is Bracken...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracken
If you scroll down you will see it has a stem and the fronds come off that,
with other ferns the fronds come straight out of a central rootball/trunk.
Over the last few years we have had them come up in all sorts of shady
places in our small garden and they always seem to choose the right spot,
this includes some maidenhair ferns which are a nice surprise.
--
Regards. Bob Hobden.
Posted to this Newsgroup from the W of London, UK

 

My father and his pal would gather sackfulls of dead ferns each autumn, then
having taken out the soil from his greenhouse, would bury the dead ferns
then replace the soil.

Bill