Help! Sugary substance on fern leaves?

If the round brown small lumps are only on the underside of the leaves and are symmetrically placed, it could be the spores naturally produced by a fern for reproduction.

BUT stickiness on plants is an indication of some type of sap-sucking insect infestation. The sticky substance is their excreta and ants love it. Some insects will extrude a small drop of this liquid any time an ant comes close to it. Some ants will stimulate the ‘pest’ insects to produce a drop of ‘nectar’. They feed the ants, the ants protect the sap-sucking insects – it’s a symbiotic relationship.

Insects that usually cause this sticky substance are aphids, scale insects or whiteflies. There can sometimes be so much excreta being produced it drips on the floor or table below the plant – which you say is happening in your case.

I would put the plant outside in the SHADE for a few days to a week. The pest’s natural predators may get rid of them.

Otherwise I would use systemic insecticide granules, which would kill all the insects.

An alternative is to treat each insect separately. The scale can be killed by touching them with a Q-tip® that has been dipped in rubbing alcohol. You would then need to buy an insect spray for indoor use that listed both aphids and whitefly on the list of insects killed by the product. Make sure you follow the instruction or you may kill the plant.

My preference has always been systemic insecticide granules – it takes a bit longer to work but it works very well (I keep a bottle of it handy at all times). You sprinkle the granules on the soil as per the directions and water it in. Done.

The insecticide is taken up by the roots of the plant – the sap-suckers drink it and die.

You have a problem with a scale insect. Some look like little brown bumps and they are sucking the juice from the plant and the internal pressure is greater than what the scale can take and forces the sugary substance out as poops. The ants are actually harvesting the sugar from the plant. Some ants are known to actually carry scales to a plant and use them for farming so that they can harvest the sugar. I have never seen the spores of a plant (fern) give off a lot of substance and cause it to get on the floor. You can use a "systemic poison" on the plant as long as it's not going to be eaten (plant or fruit) The scale have a protective shell and spraying them will not work to well,.You can clean most of them off with a Q-tip and some alcohol or insecticidal soap.

Fern Leaves

Wylde 95 has it right.

ferns produce spores to reporduce. The stick substance is a by product of that.

Scales do also produce sticky substances, and there are many kinds of scales, however, not generally on ferns. Systemic insecticide would be the treatment, especially as you can not spray a fern without damaging it.

Ants are attracted to both sticky substances.

TopCatt

Indoor Fern

sounds like it's giving off spores. They do that you know instead of producing seeds.

EDIT: this is under "Fern Structure"n the following link

and I knew from a forestry class I had in college

It is very healthy that is just part of it's life cycle

A leaf that produces spores. These leaves are analogous to the scales of pine cones or to stamens and pistil in gymnosperms and angiosperms, respectively. Unlike the seed plants, however, the sporophylls of ferns are typically not very specialized, looking similar to trophophylls and **>>producing sugars<<** by photosynthesis as the trophophylls do.

soft brown scale insects

here is a picture on a different type of plant

http://www.uidaho.edu/so-id/entomology/bs.jpg

if that is what it is you will need to treat the plant with systemic insecticide to eliminate them

the immature scales are very small and leave 'honeydew' as they move about. adults move so slowly and rarely that they don't look alive.

spores look completely different and appear on the undersides of the leaves not on the stems.

The 'lumps' are scale insects.When they move they leave a sweet slime behind,which the ants take back to their nests.You can clean your plant with soapy dishwater.Spray on.