Polypodium californicum
The California polypody is a fern of moist, shaded banks and rocks in the coastal hills and mountains of California and Baja California. It grows in the cool, wet winter and goes dormant in the dry summer, often losing its fronds, so it should be grown on a Mediterranean rhythm rather than kept wet all year.
Where it grows wild
It grows from a creeping, scaly rhizome on shaded rock faces, mossy banks and moist slopes in coastal scrub, oak woodland and canyons, often on the cooler sides of slopes. This summary draws on general knowledge of the species and the measured sites.
Recorded from near sea level to high elevations, but most records are low (median about 300 m), on coastal foothills.
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The wild conditions above, turned into targets for a shelf, a tent or a greenhouse. The full profile has:
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Profiles are drafts built from measured range and climate and from published sources; each section carries its own confidence in the app. Photo from Wikimedia Commons, used under its CC BY-SA 3.0 licence, unmodified.