(1) Roots are usually adventitious, forming fibrous roots.

(2) Most of the stems are rhizomes, creeping or walking horizontally. A few with above-ground stems, erect into a tree-like, such as Cyathea. The stems are usually covered with scales or velvet. The scales are membranous and have various shapes, often with coarse or fine sieve pores on the scales. Trichomes have unicellular hairs, glandular hairs, nodular hairs, stellate hairs, and so on.

(3) Leaves of ferns mostly grow from rhizomes, clustered, proximal or distal, and most of them are fist-curved when young, which is the original trait. According to the origin of leaves and morphological characteristics, they can be divided into two types: small leaves and large leaves. Small leaves have no leaf gaps and petioles, and only one unbranched leaf vein, such as the leaves of the Stone Pine family, the Curculionaceae family, and the Mulleinaceae family. Large leaves are petiolate, with or without leaf gaps, with many branched veins, and are evolutionary types of leaves. Such as the leaves of true ferns. Large leaves are of two types, simple and compound.

Ferns

Leaves of ferns can be subdivided into sporophytes and trophophytes according to their function. Sporophylls are leaves that produce sporangia and spores, also known as fertile leaves; trophic leaves can only photosynthesize and cannot produce sporangia and spores, also known as sterile leaves. Some ferns have sporophytes and nutritive fronds that are indistinguishable from each other, capable of photosynthesizing and producing organic matter as well as sporocysts and spores, and the shape of the fronds is also the same, called homotypic fronds, such as the common Guanzhong, scaly ferns, and stoneweed, etc.; additionally, there are two fronds with two different shapes and functions on the same plant body. That is, the nutrient leaf and the spore leaf, called heterotypic leaf, such as podocarpus fern, mistletoe fern, purple stalks and so on.