Pleopeltis michauxiana grows not in soil but on the rough bark of trees, particularly oaks, where it anchors itself among mosses and accumulates nutrients from rainfall and leaf debris alone. A North Carolina native found throughout the Southeastern US and into Mexico and Central America, it produces small monomorphic fronds — fertile and sterile are identical in shape — with round sori arranged in neat rows on the undersides. The species honors André Michaux, the French royal botanist who collected extensively across eastern North America in the late eighteenth century.

The resurrection capacity is not metaphor: the fern can shed 95 percent of its water content, curling and graying to apparent death during drought, then unfurl completely green within hours of rainfall. Cellular proteins called dehydrins prevent the cell walls from collapsing during dehydration — an adaptation that makes this fern genuinely extraordinary in biological terms. Establishing it on the rough bark of a garden oak, tucked among mosses, is a more rewarding project than it might sound, and once anchored it asks for almost nothing.