Japanese Painted Fern

The Japanese painted fern is a deciduous fern of the family Athyriaceae native to eastern Asia, including China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. It grows from a creeping rhizome into a tufted array of fronds thirty to seventy-five centimeters long; its widely grown cultivar Pictum produces gray-green fronds with reddish midribs, and both that cultivar and the related Silver Falls have received the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit. It thrives in shady garden conditions and is grown almost exclusively as an ornamental.