Definition of "ferny"

All kinds of mosses grew by the stream—tufty, flat, ferny, and curly, green, yellow and a whitish kind that was tipped with scarlet sealing wax.

1942, Emily Carr, “Time”, in The Book of Small

Ralph had stopped smiling and was pointing into the lagoon. Something creamy lay among the ferny weeds.

1954, William Golding, “Chapter One”, in Lord of the Flies

And from the bush there came the sound of little streams flowing, quickly, lightly, slipping between the smooth stones, gushing into ferny basins and out again; and there was the splashing of big drops on large leaves […]

1922, Katherine Mansfield, “At the Bay”, in The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield, Penguin, published 2007

He skirted all stables, kennels, breweries, carpenters' shops, washhouses, places where they make tallow candles, kill oxen, forge horse-shoes, stitch jerkins—for the house was a town ringing with men at work at their various crafts—and gained the ferny path leading uphill through the park unseen.

1928, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Orlando: A Biography, London: The Hogarth Press; republished as Orlando: A Biography (eBook no. 0200331h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, July 2015

We'll walk over the spring fields and through those ferny old woods.

1939, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 1, in Anne of Ingleside‎