Common names: laua'e haole (foreign laua'e) (P. & E.) rabbit's-foot fern, golden polypody

Naturalized                                    

Latin aureus, golden, gilt, pertaining to gold, in reference to the color of the scales. The intensely yellow spores impart their color to the entire sorus, but the specific epithet was bestowed for the scales.

Plants medium-sized to large, epiphytic or terrestrial. Rhizome and stipe base scales forming a thick mat of long, fine, golden to light reddish brown scales. Fronds erect or arching, 30-100 cm long. Stipes 1/3-1/2 frond length, straw-colored to brown, often bluish, glabrous except at base. Blades deeply pinnatifid, narrowly oblong, 5-18 pairs of alternate lobes, tips long-pointed, terminal segments similar to lateral lobes, light green to bluish green, often glaucous, coriaceous, rachises and midribs of lobes usually dusky bluish. Lobes linear-oblong, acuminate. Veins bluish. Sori in 1-2 rows on either side of midrib, arising at tips of single included veinlets or at junctures of 2 or 3 included veinlets.

Common epiphyte in some mesic forests, sea level to 700 m, on all major islands. Phlebodium aureum, native to tropical regions of Florida, the West Indies, Mexico, Central America, and South America, was first collected in Hawai 'i on Kaua 'i in 1910 and has since become widespread.

Phlebodium aureum, a common epiphytic (occasionally terrestrial) fern, is recognizable by its large, pinnatifid, dull bluish green fronds, creeping rhizomes densely covered with golden scales, dis-tinctive vein pattern, bluish veins, and yellow sori.