Netted Chain Fern

The netted chain fern, also called the dwarf chain fern, is a fern of the chain fern family Blechnaceae and the sole species in the genus Lorinseria, found from Texas and Florida north to Massachusetts along eastern North America, with a disjunct population in southwestern Nova Scotia. It is distinguished by interlocking, anastomosing veins and lobed fronds, with sterile fronds forty to sixty centimeters long and slightly longer fertile fronds; its appearance can be confused with the sensitive fern. It grows in moist, sandy, acid soils and is one of the few ferns that colonizes acid mine seeps in the interior United States.