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Pyrrosia lingua 'Ogon Nishiki'
Japanese Tongue Fern
Plant Type:
FERNSPyrrosia lingua 'Ogon Nishiki' (ex: Jonathan Lehrer) – This variegated form of Tongue Fern has all dark green leathery leaves sporting rays and stripes of golden yellow from the central vein to the leaf edges – some leaves more than others with the overall gestalt very beautiful. 'Ogon-nishiki' is very similar to 'O Kan' except its leaf edges tend to be smoother lines and do not flaunt the decorative brocade of 'O Kan'. A colonizing fern slowly sizes-up from rich brown hairy rhizomes. 'Ogon Nishiki' is perfectly suited to morning sun, dappled light or a bright open shade though Vaughn Raywood tells us this species is surprisingly sun tolerant... you can always move it! This is an epiphytic to lithophytic species which is happy growing on cork, boulder at the base of a tree or clamoring out of a pot if grown up north. We keep all our Pyrrosia lingua cultivars in our cool greenhouse grown in orchid baskets in an openly shaded siting. We combine coconut fiber with some loose, soil-less mix as the growing medium. Please scroll down to the Genus Overview for more information about ferns. Pot grown division.
Height:
6-10 inCharacteristics and Attributes for Pyrrosia lingua 'Ogon Nishiki'
Season of Interest (Foliage)
- Four Seasons
Nature Attraction
- Deer Resistant
Light
- Dappled Shade
- Morning Sun / Afternoon Shade
- Shade
Attributes
- Conservatory
- Natural Garden
- Border
- Potted Plant
- Collector Plant
- Bank
- Edging
- Woodland
- Epiphyte
- Evergreen
- Greenhouse / Alpine House
- Ground Cover
- Hanging Basket
Growth Rate in the Garden
- Medium
Origins
- China
- Japan
Propagated By
- Division
Genus Overview: Ferns
Ferns. The easy, elegant and exceptional beauty of ferns cannot be understated. All ferns, beautiful as specimens unto themselves, are extraordinary in their simple ability to provide rich contrast to other companions wherever their requirements befit.
Habituated to so many environments many of the ferny pteridophytes – vascular plants that reproduce by spores, not seeds - are woodland denizens thriving on the cool, damp forest floor like the Christmas Fern, Polystichum acrostochoides with some preferring the wetter disposition of bogs, swamps, and stream banks such as Osmunda cinnamomea. Others will colonize gritty soils in shade or sun like the running Hay-scented fern, Dennstaedtia punctilobula and many among the Cheilanthes. Some are tough enough to grasp a foothold in the crack of a rock, these are lithophytic, as with Asplenium trichomanes. And some – most of these tropical in origin are truly epiphytic, clinging to tree bark as they unfurl their fronds from embryonic croziers to reach into the forest light such as the primitive looking Staghorn Fern, Platycerium bifurcatum or Rabbit-foot Fern, Davallia fejeensis .
And many have historic medicinal uses such as Maidenhair Fern, Adiantum pedtaum – this from medicinalherbinfor.org, “Expectorant, anti-rheumatic, demulcent, pectoral, refrigerant, tonic”... Native Americans throughout North America used maidenhair as a hair wash to make their hair shiny.” And in a more Bacchanalian use: as a flavoring in liquers.
There was probably something fern-like, an ancient ferny forebear(s) if you will, living during the Devonian some 60 to 70 million years ago. Ferns, some we still recognize today are descendents from an ancient order whose reign during the Carboniferous Age is legend, where giant horsetails and monstrous club mosses still populate the misty recesses of our dreams... and whose contemporary plundering by Homo sapiens in the vast burning of fossil fuels is altering our climate at such an alarming rate that more among the many are beginning to query as to the potential for another mass extinction – the closing chapter of another age, a blip in the larger context of perceived time. But I digress....
All our offerings are well-rooted pot grown divisions in 5 pint squares unless otherwise indicated. The quality we offer make them worth the money. We think you will agree.