Sensitive fern is native from Newfoundland to Florida and west to Texas, the Rockies and Manitoba, including Quebec. It grows in wet meadows, bogs and stream banks and tolerates very wet, acidic soil. Deer bed down in its mats and wild turkeys eat the spore stalks. Fossils of virtually identical fronds are about 57 million years old.
Linnaeus named the genus in 1751 and the species in Species Plantarum in 1753. Onoclea comes from Greek words for a vessel and to close, describing the tightly rolled fertile fronds, and sensibilis refers to the fern's sensitivity to the first frost and to drought. The Greenbelt survey notes that Katie Dybeau of Kahnawà:ke told F. W. Waugh about uses of the roots of several ferns, including this one.