Java fern

Care at a glance

Overview

Tie or glue the rhizome to wood or rock and leave it on the surface, since burying the rhizome in substrate rots it and kills the plant. It thrives in low light with no CO2, drawing nutrients straight from the water column, which makes it one of the most forgiving plants in the hobby. Growth is slow, and the most common scare is older leaves developing black spots and brown patches, which is usually normal plantlet production rather than disease, so leave those leaves until the babies are large enough to detach.

In the wild

Native to Southeast Asia, from Malaysia and Thailand through northeastern India and parts of southern China. It grows along streams, waterfalls and riverbanks, attached to rocks, riparian roots and wood. In the wild it lives both fully submersed and emersed, as long as the rhizome and roots stay wet, so it handles seasonal water level changes well.

Good to know

A fern in the family Polypodiaceae, now formally Leptochilus pteropus though still sold everywhere as Microsorum pteropus. It grows from a creeping rhizome rather than a true root system, anchoring with fine brown holdfast roots instead of feeding from substrate. It is highly variable in the wild, which is why so many leaf forms exist, and it reproduces asexually by sprouting adventitious plantlets from leaf tips and margins as well as by spores.

Did you know

Those black bumps and brown blotches that beginners panic about on the undersides and tips of leaves are not rot but the plant cloning itself, each one grows into a tiny new fern you can pluck off and attach elsewhere.

Related plants

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• Trident java fern

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• Windelov java fern

  Microsorum pteropus 'Windelov'

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