Dryopteris affinis(Lowe) Fraser-Jenk.

Scaly Male Fern

WFO wfo-0001114328 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Dryopteris affinis, photographed by Harshjeet Singh Bal
fig. a Harshjeet Singh Bal, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-31 / obs. 202150551
Dryopteris affinis, photographed by Jerry Lanfear
fig. b Jerry Lanfear, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 141391975
Dryopteris affinis, photographed by Stephen James McWilliam
fig. c Stephen James McWilliam, CC0 1.0 / obs. 95241520
Dryopteris affinis, photographed by Susan Marley
fig. d Susan Marley, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 55325510
Dryopteris affinis, photographed by jfgodeau
fig. e jfgodeau, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 39900401
Dryopteris affinis, photographed by jfgodeau
fig. f jfgodeau, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 38226324
Dryopteris affinis, photographed by Wouter Van Landuyt
fig. g Wouter Van Landuyt, CC0 1.0 / obs. 101708052
Dryopteris affinis, photographed by Emily Chebul
fig. h Emily Chebul, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 25603670

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000351173
Filed as
Dryopteris affinis (Lowe) Fraser-Jenk.
Det. by
Fraser-Jenkins, C.R.
Collected
Lowe 1878-11-01
Origin
PT
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 31 botanical countries

Regions where Dryopteris affinis is native: Azores, Canary Is., Madeira, Iran, North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Krym, Netherlands, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe IranNorth CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyeAustriaBelgiumBulgariaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkFranceGermanyHungaryIrelandItalyKrymNetherlandsNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandPortugalRomaniaSiciliaSpainSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-Europe AzoresCanary Is.MadeiraSardegna
Native distribution of Dryopteris affinis, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Austria AUT EUROPE
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Hungary HUN
Ireland IRE
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
Netherlands NET
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Iran IRN ASIA-TEMPERATE
North Caucasus NCS
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Azores AZO AFRICA
Canary Is. CNY
Madeira MDR

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 686 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -2.7 °C 2.9 °C 9.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 16.9 °C 21.2 °C 25.1 °C
Annual rainfall 744 mm 1,329 mm 2,326 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 108 mm 181 mm 305 mm

It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 686 research-grade observations of Dryopteris affinis that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Named cultivars 1 recorded

Selections of Dryopteris affinis that somebody named and propagated. A cultivar is not a botanical taxon: it is governed by the cultivated-plant code rather than the botanical one, so it appears in no taxonomic backbone, and it has no native range and no wild population of its own. These get no page here, because a cultivar has no photographs, no range and no flowering data of its own, and a page with none of those is not a page.

From Wikidata (CC0), joined to this species on its World Flora Online identifier, so the link to the parent is exact rather than a name match. This list is what is recorded in an openly licensed register; it is not every cultivar that exists, and for many genera it is not close. Why, and how far short it falls.

Also published as 33 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Aspidium affine Lowe
  • Aspidium filix-mas var. subintegrum Döll
  • Dryopteris affinis f. valongensis Res.-Pinto ex Fraser-Jenk.
  • Dryopteris affinis subsp. atropes Fraser-Jenk.
  • Dryopteris affinis subsp. cluthensis A.R.Church
  • Dryopteris affinis var. jessenii Fraser-Jenk.
  • Dryopteris affinis var. kerryensis Fraser-Jenk.
  • Dryopteris affinis var. paleaceolobata
  • Dryopteris affinis var. punctata Oberh. & Tavel ex Fraser-Jenk.
  • Dryopteris affinis var. rubiginosa (Fom.) Askerov
  • Dryopteris affinis var. splendens (Ehrler ex Becherer) Fraser-Jenk.
  • Dryopteris affinis var. subintegra (Doell.) Askerov
  • Dryopteris atropes (Fraser-Jenk.) Tlałka
  • Dryopteris borreri subsp. resendeana (M.Pinto) Malag.
  • Dryopteris borreri subvar. splendens Ehrler ex Becherer
  • Dryopteris borreri var. atlantica Tavel
  • Dryopteris borreri var. disjuncta (Fomin) Tavel
  • Dryopteris borreri var. subintegra (Döll ex Asch. & Graebn.) Tavel
  • Dryopteris jessenii (Fraser-Jenk.) Tlałka
  • Dryopteris kerryensis (Fraser-Jenk.) P.D.Sell
  • Dryopteris paleacea f. disjuncta Fomin
  • Dryopteris paleacea f. rubiginosa Fomin
  • Dryopteris paleaceolobata (T.Moore) P.D.Sell
  • Dryopteris pseudomas (Woll.) Holub & Pouzar

and 9 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.