Let E be a CM number field, F its maximal totally real subfield, c the generator of Gal(E/F), p an odd prime totally split in E, and S a finite set of places of E containing the places above p. Let r : G_{E,S} --> GL_3(F_p^bar) be a modular, absolutely irreducible, Galois representation of type U(3), i.e. such that r^* = r^c, and let X(r) be the rigid analytic generic fiber of its universal G_{E,S}-deformation of type U(3). We show that each irreducible component of the Zariski-closure of the modular points in X(r) has dimension at least 6[F:Q]. We study an analogue of the infinite fern of Gouvea-Mazur in this context and deal with the Hilbert modular case as well. As important steps, we prove that any first order deformation of a generic enough crystalline representation of Gal(Q_p^bar/Q_p) (of any dimension) is a linear combination of trianguline deformations, and that unitary eigenvarieties (of any rank) are etale over the weight space at the non-critical classical points. As another application, we obtain a general theorem about the image of the localization at p of the p-adic Adjoint' Selmer group of the p-adic Galois representations attached to any cuspidal, cohomological, automorphic representation Pi of GL_n(A_E) such that Pi^* = Pi^c (for any n).