Is this Feverfew or a Fern?

I noticed what my instincts thought was a fern growing in a pot in my garden. I do have a lot of Feverfew which seeds itself everywhere, but this looks different. I didn't want to get my hopes up that it was some exotic fern, when it could simply be Feverfew.

I looked it up on identify.plantnet.org and this came up with Limpleaf fern, Microlepia speluncae. I read somewhere that it is native to the Hawaiian islands.

 

Looks like a fern but probably not exotic unless you have bought spores.

 

I also think it's a fern.

 

Unless you actually planted a fern then that is not one. Ferns start off as green moss like covering of the soil, they they turn into the fronds which are recognisable as a fern. Bit more complicated than that, but basically you would need to have seen something like liverwort on the soil earlier on.

 

I have seen a lot of what look like liverwort in other pots, but I haven't noticed any in this pot, that could just be my lack of observation and I have in the past few days been mulching pots with coconut coir, which would have partly covered it up, though in another pot the "liverwort" is persistent. I think the "liverwort" came with some violets that I bought about a year ago. I also noticed that moss came with the violets too. The photograph below I took on 10th April 2022 of what I thought was liverwort, growing in another pot with the violets. There is moss associated with it too.

I remember being taught at school about the lifecycle of ferns, that have sporophyte (fern) and gametophyte ("liverwort") phases.

bioweb explains clearly to remind me of what I was taught at school about sporophyte and gametophyte generations.

As you can see in the pot containing what might be fern, there is moss associated with it, which most likely came with the violets, partly covered up very recently be coconut coir mulch. This pot also contains two violet plants.

 

Exactly.

 

I posted on 10th April 2022 asking about the "liverwort", and got the helpful reply that because they have a different root system than flowering plants they don't compete and are best left alone, and also that because they are older life-forms they have a longer history of supporting wildlife.

Identify this weed/moss?

 

If it's feverfew then the foliage will smell strongly of feverfew.

 

It is such a delicate baby plant that I don't want to rub its leaves to find out if it smells of feverfew.

 

If it is a fern it is more likely to be a native species self "seeding".
Unless apps like identify.plantnet.org are 80+% certain of the ID I tend to ignore them; as they are only as good as the labels attached to photos in their database.

 

Looks like dryopteris

 

I noticed another plant there on the left, it is possibly Erigeron karvinskianus, it grows like a weed here