Golden Polypody

The golden polypody, also called the golden serpent fern, cabbage palm fern or blue-star fern, is an epiphytic fern of the family Polypodiaceae native to tropical and subtropical parts of the Americas, from southeastern Georgia and Florida through the Caribbean and coastal South America. Its creeping rhizome is densely covered in golden-brown scales, and its large, deeply lobed fronds, thirty to a hundred thirty centimeters long with up to thirty-five leaflets, range from bright to glaucous blue-green. It grows on tree trunks and branches in rainforest canopies, cloud forests, dwarf palm forests and Florida swamps and hammocks, needs high light and cannot tolerate prolonged frost, and is both a popular ornamental houseplant and a subject of herbal-medicine research into its dermatological and UV-protective properties.