Phegopteris hexagonoptera
Phegopteris hexagonoptera, commonly called the broad beech fern, is a common herbacious perennial forest fern native to the eastern United States and adjacent Ontario. It grows from a creeping rootstock, sending up individual fronds that more or less clump. Its native habitat includes moist, undisturbed, hardwood forests.
The fronds are broadly triangular. The specific epithet hexagonoptera, Latin for "six-sided wing", refers to the wings of leaf tissue along the rachis between the basal pinnae.
Sori are small, round, and naked. This aspect of the plant has caused it in the past to be placed, at first, in the genus Polypodium, then grouped with genus Dryopteris, then with the genus Thelypteris. Genetic analysis has shown the genus Phegopteris to be a sister clade to the rest of the thelypteroid ferns.
This fern makes an excellent garden plant, gradually filling in a bed.