Tree Ferns

This group gathers Ferns and Fern Allies subcategory members belonging to the tree ferns, chiefly the families Cyatheaceae and Dicksoniaceae, ferns that depart dramatically from the low, ground-hugging growth habit of most other ferns by developing a tall, upright, trunk-like stem that can in some species exceed ten meters in height. Found mainly in humid tropical and subtropical forests, and in a smaller number of temperate rainforest regions in the Southern Hemisphere, a tree fern's trunk is not true wood in the sense a flowering tree's trunk is, lacking the woody growth rings produced by a vascular cambium, but instead consists largely of a dense mat of old, persistent root tissue built up over the plant's long lifetime. Tree ferns are often strikingly ancient in appearance, evoking the prehistoric forests of the Carboniferous period even though the living tree fern families themselves evolved considerably later than that.