Plate 1 figs. a–d · 1 observation
This species has been photographed under an open licence only 1 time, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.
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.
Where it actually grows measured, from 60 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | -14.2 °C | -4.8 °C | 2.0 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 15.3 °C | 19.6 °C | 26.4 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 877 mm | 1,475 mm | 2,093 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 150 mm | 204 mm | 316 mm |
It is found where winters bring hard 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 60 research-grade observations of Dryopteris cambrensis 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.
Also published as 9 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 distans Viv.
- Dryopteris affinis subsp. cambrensis Fraser-Jenk.
- Dryopteris affinis var. distans (Viv.) Fraser-Jenk.
- Dryopteris affinis var. insubrica Oberh. & Tavel ex Fraser-Jenk.
- Dryopteris affinis var. paleaceocrispa (T.Moore) Fraser-Jenk.
- Lastrea filix-mas subvar. paleaceocrispa T.Moore
- Nephrodium distans (Viv.) Ces.
- Nephrodium filix-mas var. distans (Viv.) Fiori
- Polystichum distans (Viv.) Trevis.
Sourcesevery claim on this page
- World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
- iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
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. It has no native range either: Kew's checklist does not cover this taxon.