Kangaroo Fern

The kangaroo fern, also called the kangaroo paw fern or hound's tongue and known in Maori as kowaowao or paraharaha, is an epiphytic and lithophytic fern of the family Polypodiaceae ranging from southeastern Queensland through New South Wales and Victoria on the Australian mainland to Tasmania, Lord Howe Island, Norfolk Island, New Zealand's North and South Islands, and several Pacific island groups. Its long, creeping, gray-green rhizomes bear distinctive oval scales, and its one to nine pairs of lobed, glossy green fronds, five to fifty centimeters long, carry relatively large circular spore clusters about three to four millimeters wide on their undersides. It grows in wet sclerophyll forest and rainforest gullies and ferneries from the forest floor to the canopy, in partial to full shade.