Arachniodes simplicior (Makino) Ohwi
East Indian holly fern · Variegated shield fern
- Family
- Dryopteridaceae
- Native to
- China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Tibet
- Habit
- Rhizomatous fern
Where it comes from
East Asia. Kew’s native regions are north-central, south-central and south-east China, Japan, Korea, Tibet and Vietnam.1 India is not among them, which makes “East Indian holly fern” doubly misleading. The occurrence records make the point sharper still: of 4,589 in GBIF, 3,942 are from Japan, 445 from China — and exactly one from India.2
Kew also lists Georgia among the introduced regions, and it is worth saying that this is the US state rather than the country: there are no records from Georgia the country, and the Flora of North America gives Alabama and Georgia for its naturalisednaturalisedGrowing and reproducing outside cultivation in a place it is not native to, without help. Three plants in this collection are naturalised somewhere, and banned there for it.Glossary relatives.21
Naming and description
Published by Makino and transferred by Ohwi.3
The family is worth a sentence because two tier-one sources disagree. Kew places Arachniodes in Polypodiaceae, using a deliberately broad circumscription of that family.4 IPNIIPNIThe International Plant Names Index. It records where and when a name was published, without ruling on whether it is the accepted one — that is POWO's job.Glossary, the standard fern classification and the regional floras all place it in Dryopteridaceae.356 This site normally follows Kew without argument; here it does not, because Dryopteridaceae is what a reader will meet in every other source, and the disagreement is about how wide to draw a family rather than about what this plant is.
The fronds are stiff, glossy and holly-toothed, with a pale band along the midrib in the variegatedvariegationPatches of leaf with little or no chlorophyll, so they read as white, cream or yellow. The pale tissue cannot feed itself, which is why a variegated plant grows more slowly than a plain one.Glossary forms.
Fun facts
- It is more closely related to an oak tree than to the spikemoss on the next shelf. Both are filed under “Ferns” on this site’s checklist, which is the owner’s shelf rather than a claim — but ferns and seed plants are one lineage and lycophyteslycophyteA member of the older of the two surviving lineages of vascular plants, separated from ferns and seed plants for roughly 410 million years. Spikemosses and clubmosses are lycophytes; nothing sold as a fern is.Glossary are the other, and the two separated around 410 million years ago.7 That is most of the history of life on land.
- The ASPCA page for “Holly Fern” is not this plant. Its scientific-name field reads Cyrtomium falcatum — a different genusgenusThe rank above species: a group of species close enough to share a name. Monstera and Philodendron are genera; the first word of a botanical name is the genus.Glossary entirely.8 There is no ASPCA record for Arachniodes at all, and NC State’s page for this species carries no poison section either, so this page makes no toxicity claim rather than borrowing one. That is the sixth consecutive group in which an ASPCA plant page has not said what it appears to say — and the ASPCA’s own search box turns out to have the same flaw as the RHSRHSThe Royal Horticultural Society. Its plant register and its Award of Garden Merit are among the few horticultural authorities worth citing.Glossary’s, returning an unfiltered alphabetical list whatever you ask it.
- The published hardiness disagrees with itself. NC State tags it zones 6a-9b while its own prose says 7-10, and the Hardy Fern Foundation says 7-9.910 A three-zone spread across three sources, none of which admits the uncertainty — worth knowing before you leave one outside.
Care
- Light
- Shade to dappled shade. A north window, or well back from a brighter one. Direct sun bleaches the fronds.
- Water
- Evenly moist, never waterlogged and never bone dry. Ferns have no mechanism for recovering from a dried-out rootball the way a succulent does.
- Humidity
- Moderate to high, though this genus copes with ordinary room air better than most ferns. The general fern guidance is a 30% floor with 40-50% as the target.
- Temperature
- Ordinary room temperatures. It is hardy outdoors — the published zone tags disagree, running from 6a to 10 across three sources, which is a wider spread than any of them admits.
- Substrate
- A humus-rich, free-draining mix. It grows in woodland leaf litter, not bog.
- Fertilizer
- A balanced feed at half strength through the growing season, sparingly. Ferns burn easily.
- Propagation
- Division of the rhizome, which is documented for the genus. Raising from spores is documented for ferns in general but not for this genus in particular, which is worth knowing before you conclude you are doing it wrong.
- Dormancy
- None indoors. Outdoors it is semi-evergreen and slows through winter.
- Common problems
-
- Crisp brown frond edges from dry air or from a rootball that dried out
- Scorch in direct sun
- Scale, mealybugs and aphids — though the species record says no serious pests, which contradicts the genus record on the same site
- Root rot in a mix that stays saturated
- New fronds emerging small or distorted usually means it is hungry or pot-bound