Royal Fern is an upright, sprawling plant with fibrous roots from a rhizome. The rhizome is nearly superficial, the older portion soon decaying. The growing part is covered with old stripe-bases and roots. Its preferred habitat is bogs, swampy areas, and stream banks. Distribution is throughout the Escambia region.

The fronds (leaves) are numerous and erect. They are continuous with the rhizome, at first reddish or glaucous (covered or whitened with a bloom), becoming green. The blades (expanded portion of a leaf) are bright green, rounded on the back, with broad stipule-like basal wings. The blades are lance-ovate, leathery, bipinnate, with ascending leaves that are oblong, subentire or finely toothed, blunt and nearly sessile pinnules that may also be rounded. Fertile fronds are terminated by a narrowly ovoid to oblong panicle of greenish, finally brownish, racemose branches. The rachises (axis of a compound leaf) bear numerous, rather persistent, black hair-like scales.

The generic name Osmunda is of Saxon origin and was one of the titles of the pagan deity Thor. The royal fern belongs to the family Osmundaceae. Fossils belonging to this family have been found in rocks of Permian age (230,000,000 years), a time when the continents were consolidated. Thus it is not surprising that Osmundaceae occur on all continents except Antarctica.

The royal fern is one of the most widespread of all living plant species and is found on every continent except Australia. This plant has witnessed the rise of reptiles, the flourishing and eventual extinction of the dinosaurs, the origin and adaptive radiation of mammals, and the rise to dominance of an obscure genus later known as human.

The royal fern has many traits that seem maladaptive; burdened with characteristics that defy its survival - yet in spite of a variety of reproductive limitations, royal ferns have survived and flourished for hundreds of millions of years!

From Gray's Manual of Botany: "The life cycle of this fern is divided into two independent components, a diploid sporophyte and haploid gametophyte. The familiar fern plant with the stem, roots and leaves is the diploid sporophyte."

The royal fern is long-lived (over 100 years). The rhizome is underground just below the soil surface and is very slow growing. Unfortunately, this characteristic prevents it from surviving in environments where sediments bury the stem. The rhizome is clothed in roots which have two functions: to take nutrients from the soil and as a protective armor for the living stem tissue. Ferns have never evolved bark for stem protection.

The above-ground parts are the fronds (leaves); each frond may be over three feet in length and is twice subdivided before leaflets are developed. The terminal portion of the leaf forms masses of spores.

Reproduction begins within the spores, where hundreds of cells undergo meiosis (the process of cell devision in animals and plants). The spore cells begin forming late in May or early June, appearing on developing leaves. Each sporangia forms hundreds of small dust-like particles that are dispersed by wind, rain, and animals.