Athyrium niponicum 'Pictum'

Athyrium niponicum Pictum is a deciduous fern

This lovely cold-hardy plant known as the Japanese painted fern (ht 30 cm) has delicate silvery, pink-tinted foliage. It will grow in full or part shade, but part shade gives more colour to the foliage. It spreads via a creeping rhizome. Like most ferns, it enjoys a moist, well-drained soil, rich in organic matter. It is deciduous - every year I forget this and think I have lost it, but it reemerges in September. Propagation is by careful division of the rhizomes in autumn before it disappears.

Note that this fern seems to have been renamed Anisocampium niponicum 'Pictum', but I am not sure the name has caught on amongst nurseries and gardeners!