What does ostrich fern mean?

Definitions for ostrich fern

Here are all the possible meanings and translations of the word ostrich fern.

Princeton's WordNet

  1. ostrich fern, shuttlecock fern, fiddlehead, Matteuccia struthiopteris, Pteretis struthiopteris, Onoclea struthiopteris(noun)

    tall fern of northern temperate regions having graceful arched fronds and sporophylls resembling ostrich plumes


  1. Ostrich Fern

    Matteuccia struthiopteris is a crown-forming, colony-forming fern, occurring in temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere in eastern and northern Europe, northern Asia and northern North America. The species epithet struthiopteris comes from Ancient Greek words, struthio meaning ostrich and pterion meaning wing. It grows from a completely vertical crown, favoring riverbanks and sandbars, but sends out lateral stolons to form new crowns. It thus can form dense colonies resistant to destruction by floodwaters. The fronds are dimorphic, with the deciduous green sterile fronds being almost vertical, 100–170 cm tall and 20–35 cm broad, long-tapering to the base but short-tapering to the tip, so that they resemble ostrich plumes, hence the name. The fertile fronds are shorter, 40–60 cm long, brown when ripe, with highly modified and constricted leaf tissue curled over the sporangia; they develop in autumn, persist erect over the winter and release the spores in early spring. Matteuccia species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including Sthenopis auratus.


  1. Chaldean Numerology

    The numerical value of ostrich fern in Chaldean Numerology is: 9

  2. Pythagorean Numerology

    The numerical value of ostrich fern in Pythagorean Numerology is: 9


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"ostrich fern." Definitions.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2017. Web. 22 Jul 2017. <http://www.definitions.net/definition/ostrich fern>.

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