Native plants for a Cape Cod garden

What is unusual about this fern is that it is an evergreen plant. I should find the greenish-blue fronds against a blanket of snow next January. Another distinguishing feature of this fern is that only the upper parts of the fronds are fertile (but there are no separate sterile and fertile fronds like in other fern species).

I added a handful of these ferns just last week to an an area under white oak, in the semi shade on the north side of the property. This seems appropriate, since the genus name is derived from the Greek “dryas” meaning oak and “pteris” meaning fern, refering to the location of some European species in moist oak woods…