Japanese painted fern

Japanese painted fern is a small deciduous woodland fern from eastern Asia, grown worldwide for its frosted silver-green fronds laced with wine-red veins and stems. It forms low, spreading clumps about a foot tall in shady, humus-rich soil and dies back to the ground each winter.

• The silvery sheen comes from air spaces beneath the frond surface, not from pigment.
• It was named Perennial Plant of the Year in 2004, one of very few ferns to win.
• Each frond's color shifts through the season, brightest in cool spring shade and fading toward plain green in summer heat.

Care
Give it dappled shade and consistently moist, leaf-rich soil, and leave the dead fronds until spring to protect the crown.