Platycerium willinckii 'Spur'
Spur

What the name refers to

Spur is a trade name for a dwarf selection of Platycerium willinckii. It is a trade name, not a registered cultivar. PlatyWiki, summarising the namer's own account in a growers' group, says a Thai nursery picked this plant out of Dwarf Nook sporelings and sold it to a Taiwanese collector, a spinal surgeon with thousands of operations behind him, who named it after "bone spur" for the little spines at the tips of its fertile fronds. According to PlatyWiki, Dwarf Nook is a line raised from the spores of a small willinckii mother plant. This is a community record with no other documentation behind it.

One English-language site calls Spur full-sized and says the name comes from forks appearing early. That contradicts the namer and cites nothing, so we leave it out.

How to recognise it

• Very small, a true dwarf: even mature plants make only a small clump.
• Small spines at the fertile-frond tips: short, irregular forks, like spurs on bone.
• Pronounced white veins: the veins on the fertile fronds stand out as white lines.
• The namer also mentions a bluish cast to the fertile fronds and a diamond-shaped, spiny frond outline.

One seller describes the fertile fronds as upright; that comes from a single source.

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Care

Grow it as a dwarf willinckii, and treat it as an even smaller, slower one: scale the board and moss down to the plant and water only when dry, never on a long-armed willinckii's schedule. A Taiwanese blog rates it "difficult"; one Japanese grower keeps it indoors under grow lights above 22°C. The namer writes on Instagram that Spur seldom produces shield fronds, yet their own plant does so in harsher conditions. Compact dwarfs carry their weight high, so add support when you mount it, and if it wobbles, re-secure it as described in a wobbly staghorn fern.

What it gets confused with

Descriptions of Robin overlap almost completely: also said to come from Dwarf Nook sporelings, dwarf, with strong veins and spiny tips. A Japanese grower guesses that Robin is simply Spur in tissue culture, but Taiwanese sellers do not say so, and we do not treat them as the same plant.

Three questions before you buy

1. How was it propagated? Pups are the most common; tissue-cultured plants labelled "Spur TC" exist in Japan. A pup is the same individual as its mother; sporelings segregate.
2. Can you see a mature plant? Spines and veins do not show at the seedling stage, so ask for photos of the mother or of mature plants from the same batch.
3. Which line does the name follow? If a seller lists both Spur and Robin, ask exactly which source the plant comes from.