prickly shield fern

1. 1.

   North American fern whose more or less evergreen leathery fronds are covered with pale brown chafflike scales

   SynonymsBraun's holly fernPolystichum braunii

   Broaderholly fern

Questions about prickly shield fern

What does prickly shield fern mean?

prickly shield fern means "North American fern whose more or less evergreen leathery fronds are covered with pale brown chafflike scales".

What is another word for prickly shield fern?

Close synonyms include Braun's holly fern, Polystichum braunii. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is prickly shield fern a common word?

prickly shield fern is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.