Plant of the fern family

Abstract

A new and distinct variety (cultivar) of fern plant of the group known commercially as "Boston ferns" has been discovered and propagated. The new cultivar originated as a vegetative variant ("bud sport") of a plant of Nephrolepis exaltata cv. Verona, and is distinguished from its parent and other cultivars of "Boston ferns" by fronds that have shorter, more numerous and crowded divisions which grow entangled with one another to produce thick matted blades, and by pinnules that have laminae which are very small, variable in shapes but predominately narrowly linear, irregularly pinnatifid or forked.

I claim: 
     
       1. The new and distinct plant variety of Boston fern substantially as herein described and characterized by a growth habit which provides specimens with repeatedly dissected leaves with short divisions and small variable pinnules and that appears as a dense fluffy dome-shaped mass of entangled leaves, and that, in comparison to Nephrolepis exaltata cv. Smithii and cv. Fantasia, has leaves which become pendant at an earlier age and which tend to continue to be bent abaxially, has divisions of the blade which so crowd into each other and into adjacent leaflets and leaves as to form a thicker, denser and fluffier mass, and has pinnules with laminae predominantly more narrowly linear, irregularly pinnatifid or dichotomously branched, the overall color of said specimens being substantially moderate yellow green.