Japanese Holly Fern
Cyrtomium falcatum
A glossy, leathery evergreen fern with holly-like leaflets that brightens shady corners, slopes and pond edges. It's low-care, copes with drier soil and salt spray better than most ferns, and deer and rabbits leave it alone. Frost browns the fronds; trim them in late winter and new ones soon follow.
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- Mature size
- 2 × 3 ft
- 0.6 × 0.9 m, tall × wide
- Hardiness
- Zones 7a–10b
- USDA
- Sun
- Part shade to full shade
- Water
- Medium to moist
Japanese Holly Fern at its mature size
A mature Japanese Holly Fern grows 1.5 to 2 feet tall and 2 to 3 feet wide.
Drawn to scale beside a 5 ft 9 in person. With VeraScape, you see it at this size in your own yard.
Typical mature size, unpruned. Sources: NC State Extension, The Tree Center, UF/IFAS Extension.
Through the year
What Japanese Holly Fern looks like month by month in a typical zone 6–7 garden.
In leaf · Year-round
Glossy leathery dark green holly-shaped leaflets.
Photos
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Growing Japanese Holly Fern
- Grows well in
- The Southeast, the Plains and Mountain West, and California.
- Growth rate
- Slow
- Good for
- Groundcover, shade garden, slopes, and deer resistant
- Leaves
- Evergreen
- Native to
- Japan, China, and Korea
Spacing
VeraScape spaces plants so their grown canopies just touch. For Japanese Holly Fern, that’s about 3 ft apart, center to center.
Place a row in your own yard and VeraScape spaces them at their mature width, so you can see whether they’ll crowd the walk.
See Japanese Holly Fern in your yard before you dig
Visualize it at its true size, alongside the rest of your design.
Other ferns
Autumn Fern
Japanese Holly Fern
Christmas Fern
Japanese Painted FernAll drawn to the same scale.