Selaginella willdenowii
A tropical Asian spikemoss, often called the peacock fern, whose leaves shine an iridescent blue in shade. The blue comes from thin-film interference in the upper cuticle and is linked to life under a deep forest canopy. Wild plants are scrambling climbers that grow in warm, humid lowland forest, so they want warmth, shade, high humidity and room to climb.
Where it grows wild
Grows in the shaded understory and at the edges of warm, humid lowland and hill forest, often scrambling through shrubs and other plants. The iridescence is thought to reduce damage from sunflecks passing through the canopy onto a shade-adapted plant.
The recorded elevations run from 6 to 1450 m, with a median of 170 m (106 records), so it is mainly a lowland plant.
🔒 Growing it like that
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 2.0 licence, unmodified.