Woodwardia virginica 'Perquimans'

This wonderful US native, from Maine to Texas, is strangely missing from gardens despite being a great, easy-to-grow garden specimen. Woodwardia virginica is usually found in bogs...often in very acidic, mucky soils, but we have found it quite adaptable in our dry sand. Woodwardia virginica has a long, creeping, deciduous rhizome that is topped during the growing season with vertical black stipes and upright 18" green fronds that often emerge coppery red. Woodwardia virginica is a nice spreader, but nothing like the weedy bracken fern. Our 5 year-old patches are 4' wide.