I got a silver dollar fern from the nursery almost four months ago now, and have been keeping it as a house plant. After I brought it home, all its gorgeous foliage promptly died back. I started watering it religiously, as a friend's experience with a maidenhair fern suggested this was necessary. For a while it produced new sprouts on a regular basis, but all of these would turn brown and die before even unfurling. I began to suspect that low humidity was a problem, so I put the pot in a "pebble tray" with water in the bottom, and covered it with a transparent jar. This seemed to help; some of the new growth actually unfurled and didn't die.

One day my cat knocked the jar off, and after just a few hours of being uncovered, one of the sprouts had wilted beyond repair ... so I know I can't remove the jar. And yet, with the jar on I lost another sprout to mold. Only one sprout remains, but it is tiny and not getting any larger, and the fern has stopped producing new growth.

I live in Colorado, and the fern sits in a window. One web site I read suggested that the short days may have caused the fern to go dormant, and if that is the case then I need to refrigerate it for six weeks or it will die. Ooor maybe putting it in the fridge would be its death knell. Maybe I should take it to work and let it sit under the nice fluorescent lights there. Maybe I should pull my hair and scream. Got any better ideas?