FEATURES

Tree ferns up to 8 m tall. Rhizomatous usually forming colonial stands. Rhizomes numerous spreading from main stock 1–2 m or more distant, giving rise to subsidiary erect caudices. Trunk slender, solitary, bifurcated (sometimes several times over), up to c.200 mm diam., composed of long-persistent, black stipe bases, interwoven dark brown to black rootlets, red-brown hairs and dormant or active aerial buds. Fronds numerous, persistent or not in death, either falling or forming an untidy, tattered skirt (especially on young plants); in life erect, arching, forming an often tattered, untidy crown, 1.0–2.0(–2.6) m long, 0.5–1.0 m wide. Stipes (180–)280–300(–320) mm long, black, ± rugose, base densely clad deciduous dark red-brown to brown filiform hairs 30–40(–55) mm long; rachises initially clad in dark reddish brown hairs when young, becoming rugose with age. Lamina (0.68–)1.6–(2.28) m long, oblonglanceolate, (2–)3–4-pinnate, adaxially light to dark glossy green, abaxially paler, harshly coriaceous; primary pinnae 250–500 mm long, deltoid-ovate to lanceolate, acuminate; secondary pinnae close-set to ± overlapping, 50–80 mm long, acute. Barren pinnules 10–18 mm, acute, often sharply toothed, widened and confluent at base, shallowly concave; fertile pinnules close-set, narrowly confluent at base, 10–15 mm long; lobes strongly concavo-convex c.5 mm. long, rounded, each bearing a sorus. Sorus ± rounded, terminating veins at fertile pinnae margins; sporangia on raised receptacle, partially obscured by in rolled pinnae margin, and delicate, submembranous inner indusium. Spores golden brown to red-brown.

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From the New Zealand Plant Conservation Network's website:

Dicksonia squarrosa • New Zealand Plant Conservation Network (nzpcn.org.nz)

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