Here's a little gem that's pretty common in garden centres and DIY stores. It's Dryopteris erythrosora, or the Buckler fern. I don't know why it's called the Buckler fern. It looked rather sorry for itself when I bought it (the photo above was soon after I'd potted it up), although a couple of deep red fronds were on the brink of unfurling.
It looks better now (although I realised once I'd already decided I was jolly well writing about it today that I don't have a great photo of it), and is tucked behind the Wollemia in a nice shady part of the garden.
The redness of the fronds (although really they're more a coppery brown) is obvious against the Matteuccia struthiopteris behind it. And it brings a bit of colour to the garden (dirty bronze is a colour!).
Now, I'm sure I saw somewhere (and I'm really sorry to whoever wrote this - I've looked through my feeds and I can't find the original post, so please comment and link to the post if I've unwittingly plagiarised you) that a certain cycad species throws up brown young leaves, which turn green as they mature, and the writer concerned wondered if this was an adaptation to avoid predation until the leaves were established, since brown would look less hospitable to grazers.
Since the Dryopteris leaves are brown when young and turn green as they mature, the same effect could be achieved. Yay - convergent evolution in ferns and cycads!
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