• Image of Pyrrosia lingua|Juniper Level Botanic Gdn, NC|JLBG

    Photo by JLBG taken at Juniper Level Botanic Gdn, NC

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Pyrrosia lingua

Tongue Fern

This plant is not currently for sale. This is an archive page preserved for informational use.

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Item #: 977

Zones: 7b to 10b

Dormancy: Evergreen

Height: 12" tall

Culture: Part Sun to Light Shade

Origin: China, Japan, Taiwan

Pot Size: 3.5" pot (24 fl. oz/0.7 L)


With leaves that look and feel more like a cow's tongue, it's hard to imagine that these are really ferns. Many books claim that Pyrrosia lingua isn't winter hardy here, but we grow only uneducated ferns that can't read gardening books. The hard rhizome grows along the ground and the leaves arise singly from it. The tongue-shaped leaves have a unique, cardboard-like texture with a felty backside and eventually make a nice evergreen mass. Pyrrosia prefers to grow on a steep slope or somewhere where the self-attaching rhizomes can adhere to a vertical surface.