Anybody can stage a photo, but can anybody grow a plant?
I recently had a brief online discussion with my friend Marianne, who blogs at Small Town Gardener. Marianne took issue with a magazine article describing maidenhair ferns (Adiantum) as an "easy" houseplant to brighten the home. The picture of a pretty little fern (not the photo above) was captioned, "Living things boost energy in a space. Maidenhair and Boston ferns (shown) get high marks for their hardiness (read: they're hard to kill) and bring lushness to a bookshelf, console, or entry table. For something a tad daintier, try white allium."
What does "boost energy" even mean? Moreover, what could possibly be daintier than a maidenhair fern, and what the heck is "white allium"? But Marianne's takeaway was, "Maidenhair and Boston ferns easy to grow indoors? What?!?!? This type of cutesy misinformation makes me absolutely crazy. Why? Because when people new to plants try and fail to grow these high-humidity moisture lovers well (and I do stress 'well'), they then think of themselves as failures."
I've grown several different kinds of maidenhair fern indoors and I have found them to be quite easy. Heck, a couple of them are even greenhouse weeds. I grabbed the plant for the photo at the top from this group on my light stand, where they're growing in the middle of winter without any supplemental humidity:
