Specimen record

Sweet Fern

Comptonia peregrina

Description

Despite its common name, sweet fern is not a fern but a low deciduous shrub with deeply lobed, fern-like leaves that are intensely fragrant when crushed. It grows on dry, sandy, acidic roadsides and disturbed areas, often in poor soil where few other shrubs thrive. The leaves have a sweet, balsamic, resinous fragrance that is released when brushed against or crushed. It fixes nitrogen through root nodules, allowing it to colonize nutrient-poor soils.

Identification tips

• 1Narrow, deeply lobed leaves that look like fern fronds but are on a woody shrub
• 2Intensely aromatic when crushed — sweet, balsamic, resinous scent
• 3Low, colonial shrub 60–120 cm tall on dry, sandy, acidic sites
• 4Small burr-like fruits enclosed by spiny bracts in late summer
• 5Grows in poor, dry soils along roadsides and power-line cuts where little else thrives