1. Deciduous shrub of eastern North America with sweet scented fernlike leaves and tiny white flowers
   "Sweet fern lined the sandy path through the pine woods";
   - Comptonia peregrina, Comptonia asplenifolia
    
2. Mat-forming lithophytic or terrestrial fern with creeping rootstocks and large pinnatifid fronds found throughout North America and Europe and Africa and east Asia
   "sweet fern covered the old stone wall";
   - common polypody, adder's fern, wall fern, golden maidenhair, golden polypody, Polypodium vulgare

Derived forms: sweet ferns

Type of: bush, polypody, shrub

Part of: Comptonia, genus Comptonia

Encyclopedia: Sweet fern