ferny

comparative fernier · superlative ferniest

1. Of or pertaining to ferns.
2. Resembling or characteristic of a fern, in appearance, smell, etc.

   Ralph had stopped smiling and was pointing into the lagoon. Something creamy lay among the ferny weeds.

   1954, William Golding, “Chapter One”, in Lord of the Flies

   1 more example

   All kinds of mosses grew by the stream—tufty, flat, ferny, and curly, green, yellow and a whitish kind that was tipped with scarlet sealing wax.

   1942, Emily Carr, “Time”, in The Book of Small, Toronto, Ont.: Oxford University Press, →OCLC

3. Covered in or filled with ferns; flanked or surrounded by ferns.

   We'll walk over the spring fields and through those ferny old woods.

   1939, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 1, in Anne of Ingleside

   2 more examples

   And from the bush there came the sound of little streams flowing, quickly, lightly, slipping between the smooth stones, gushing into ferny basins and out again; and there was the splashing of big drops on large leaves […]

   1922, Katherine Mansfield, “At the Bay”, in The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield, Penguin, published 2007

   He skirted all stables, kennels, breweries, carpenters' shops, washhouses, places where they make tallow candles, kill oxen, forge horse-shoes, stitch jerkins—for the house was a town ringing with men at work at their various crafts—and gained the ferny path leading uphill through the park unseen.

   1928, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Orlando: A Biography, London: The Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished as Orlando: A Biography (eBook no. 0200331h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, July 2015