For the last 5 years, I had thought that the fern that I managed to grow on a little piece of wood was a Rabbit's Foot Fern (Davallia denticulata). This small fern colony was set up in July 2009. The assumed baby Rabbit's Foot Fern was obtained from the base of a Common Acacia tree (Acacia auriculiformis). This fern is very common in Singapore. Besides this fern, I had added some other ferns to the fern enclave over time. Nothing spectacular happened over the years. Currently, the dominating fern species was the Giant Sword Fern (Nephrolepis biserrata).

Things turned interesting last week when I discovered that one of the frond (leaf) of the Rabbit's Foot Fern was producing sporangia (spore-containing bodies). I was quite delighted that the fern had eventually decided to produce spores. Upon closer examination of the sporangia, I got even more excited. The fern was a Giant Hares Foot Fern (Davallia solida). I had yet to identify a Giant Hares Foot Fern in the wild here, not knowing one of them had been staying with me all the time. Compare to Rabbit's Foot Fern, Giant Hares Foot Fern is the less common species.

I had just added picture of the Giant Hares Foot Fern to my plant pictorial deck last December. But, the sighting was not in Singapore but in Malaysia during my holidays there. The fronds of the two ferns looked very much the same to me. It was difficult to tell one from the other by just looking at the fronds. The only distinctive feature is the morphology of the sori (structure that housed cluster of sporangia) --- the sori of the Rabbit's Foot Fern are more rounded while that of the Giant Hares Foot Fern are slightly elongated.

I will be on the lookout for sporing Rabbit's Foot Fern, just to make sure that the non-fertile fern pictures that I took in the past are really the right fern. I might have mixed up the pictures of the 2 species.