Asplenium platyneuron plant. Similar buds have also been reported from the single-sorus spleenwort, "Asplenium monanthes". The species most similar to "Asplenium platyneuron" is the black-stemmed spleenwort, "A. resiliens". However, this stipe of this species is darker, and the pinnae are opposite, rather than alternate, along the rachis. Neither black-stemmed spleenwort nor the other pinnate American spleenworts have dimorphic fertile and sterile fronds. It might be confused with a young Christmas fern, "Polystichum acrostichoides", but that species is generally much larger and has a green, scaly stipe and rachis. It is very similar to Boydston's spleenwort, "Asplenium × boydstoniae", a backcross with Tutwiler's
Asplenium platyneuron result of long-distance dispersal, which may also have allowed it to colonize and naturalize in South Africa. While globally secure, ebony spleenwort is considered an endangered species in some of the states and provinces at the northern and western edges of its North American range. NatureServe considers it to be critically imperiled in Arizona and Colorado, imperiled in Nebraska, Maine, Rhode Island, and Quebec, and vulnerable in Minnesota. The ebony spleenwort is sometimes grown as a terrarium or garden plant. It can be cultivated in sandy peat, subacid garden soil, other gravelly, sandy or gritty soils, or potting mix under