Woodwardia unigemmata

[Véronique Macrelle]

my Woodwardia unigemmata (2nd winter in open ground) produces 3 bulbils on its fronds. these are small fluffy balls of 3 to 5 mm.
 do you know how to make them become a fern? how to propagate this fern from the bulbils?
for now the leaves do not seem to suffer from the cold .. but it has only been - 6 ° C last week..

[Maggi Young]

I would  remove the  bulbils  now  and pot them up, cover them lightly  with a  neutral ph substrate  and  put them somewhere  sheltered - I think they will sprout  in spring. 

[Véronique Macrelle]

thank, Maggy

[Véronique Macrelle]

here are the photos of Woodwardia: it has only been planted for 2 years, and is still small: only 3 leaves this year, one of which is 80 cm long.


then the few bulbils on the leaves

[RoryOH]

Asplenium bulbiferum produces bulbils also. In the first pic you can see them attached and second pic is one detached waiting to be planted in a small pot. They take fairly easily.

[Véronique Macrelle]

At the end of December, I cut the ends of the leaves and buried them in potting soil.
today, I went to see a little underground, it seems to me that the bulblets thicken..

[Véronique Macrelle]

finally 2 years later, by trial and error, i found how to do it.
 of course the fronds are now fuller, and the bulblets a bit thicker too but the Woodwardia ( 5 nice fronds) is not yet mature enough to make spores.

It is better to leave the bulblet on the frond and treat it as a marcotte, which it probably does naturally.
 But the production of the new fern is accelerated if I bury the bulblet in a pot of potting soil. another method according to a fern grower, is to bury the bulblets under some plant material. But according to him it takes longer than germinating spores!

however, my little bulbils, which I put in a pot of potting soil in october, are now swollen to about 3 cm, blond in colour as far as I can see, and are developing nice roots.
I cut off the ends of the fronds: they have been free for 1 week.
2 out of 3 are starting a new leaf.

[ruweiss]

We had again very hot temperatures in this summer which resulted in a scorched group
of Matteuccia struthiopteris and never thought, that they would recover. But the plants did
so to our astonishment and we could watch new growth after a rainy period. Phyllitis scolopendrium
did not mind the hot weather and loked good as ever; so did also more of the ferns in our garden.