326 articles
Salvinia natans
Salvinia natans (floating watermoss, 槐叶蘋, サンショウモ) is a small free-floating aquatic fern native to temperate Eurasia and North Africa, an annual that reproduces by frost-sensitive spores and vegetative ramets, and is often confused in trade with invasive giant salvinia.
Salviniales
Salviniales (water ferns, Hydropteridales) is an order of about 70 heterosporous aquatic fern species in Marsileaceae and Salviniaceae, including Salvinia and Azolla, with sporocarps and rice biofertilizer use.
Schizaeaceae
Schizaeaceae (comb ferns) is a family of Schizaeales ferns published by Kaulfuss in 1827, chiefly pantropical with about 150 species; accepted genera vary from two (Schizaea, Actinostachys) to three (adding Microschizaea), defined by a subapical-annulus sporangium opening lengthwise.
Seed-fern stomatal CO₂ proxies (Lepidopteris and allies)
Seed-fern stomatal CO₂ proxies reconstruct past atmospheric CO₂ from stomatal index on fossil Lepidopteris cuticles, via stomatal ratio, transfer functions, or Franks gas-exchange models; key for end-Triassic and Permian–Triassic greenhouse crises.
Selaginella
Selaginella (spikemoss) is a cosmopolitan genus of about 750 heterosporous lycophyte species with ligulate four-ranked leaves and terminal strobili, dating to roughly 383 million years ago, including resurrection plants like S. lepidophylla.
Selaginella lepidophylla
Selaginella lepidophylla, the resurrection plant or false rose of Jericho, is a Chihuahuan desert lycophyte that survives >95% water loss for decades, curling into a ball when dry and reviving on rehydration.
Selaginellaceae
Selaginellaceae (spikemoss family), a lycophyte family with the single genus Selaginella, about 700–800 species worldwide; ligulate leaves, heterospory, rhizophores, split into 7 subfamilies and 19 genera in 2023.
Selaginellales
Selaginellales is an order of lycophytes containing one family, Selaginellaceae, and one genus, Selaginella (spikemoss), with about 750 heterosporous, ligulate-leaved species worldwide except Antarctica, dating to the Late Devonian.
Shade tolerance
Shade tolerance is a plant's capacity to survive and grow at low light, defined as the minimum light for survival. Key traits include low light compensation points, high leaf mass per area, and conservative growth, contrasting with shade avoidance.
Silica in Equisetum: deposition and biomineralization
Silica in Equisetum (horsetails): amorphous SiO2 biomineralization from silicic acid, up to 25% of dry matter, deposited via callose templating and NIP aquaporin transporters, distinguishing horsetails from grasses.
Silver fern
Silver fern (ponga; Alsophila dealbata, formerly Cyathea dealbata): a New Zealand-endemic tree fern up to 10 m with white frond undersides, common in drier lowland forest, Not Threatened, and a national symbol of New Zealand.
Southern Hemisphere quillworts
Southern Hemisphere quillworts are small, grass-like aquatic to semi-aquatic Isoetes species of nutrient-poor wetlands, native to Africa, Australasia, and South America, with northern-central South America the richest hotspot.
Sphaeropteris
Sphaeropteris (Bernhardi, 1801) is a genus of about 105 scaly tree ferns in Cyatheaceae, sister to all other genera and defined by conform scales, native from Mexico and the Caribbean to southern China and the South Pacific, absent from Africa and Madagascar.
Spleenworts in rock gardens and ferneries
Spleenworts in rock gardens and ferneries is the cultivation of small evergreen Asplenium ferns, including maidenhair spleenwort and hart's-tongue, which naturally grow on cliffs and walls and thrive in alkaline crevices with sharp drainage and shade.
Spore and pollen abnormalities as ecological stress indicators
Malformed fossil spores and pollen grains, formed when meiosis or tetrad-stage grain separation is disrupted, permanently record environmental stress in land plants, peaking at mass extinctions.
Spore dispersal in ferns
Spore dispersal in ferns is how haploid spores travel from the parent plant to new sites, ejected by a sporangium cavitation catapult at about 10 meters per second.
Spore dormancy and germination in ferns
Spore dormancy and germination in ferns describe how released spores persist, sometimes over 50 years, until light, temperature, and moisture allow germination into a gametophyte.
Sporocarp (ferns)
A sporocarp is a hardened, nut-like reproductive body of aquatic ferns such as Marsilea and Azolla, enclosing spores and able to germinate after 100 years of dormancy.
Sticherus
Sticherus (umbrella ferns) is a pantropical genus of about 89 species of forked Gleicheniaceae ferns with scaly buds, single-rowed sori, and monolete spores; genomic phylogeny showed paraphyly, leading to Sticheropsis segregation in 2024.
Sticherus tener
Sticherus tener, known as the Silky Fan-fern or Tasman Fan-fern, is a creeping fan-fern in the Gleicheniaceae family native to Victoria, Tasmania, and New Zealand's southern South Island.
Systematic placement and evolution of whisk ferns
Whisk ferns (Psilotaceae) are a small family of rootless, leafless vascular plants, once classed as relics of early land plants, that molecular studies place as ferns sister to Ophioglossaceae.
Systematics and fossil record of Dryopteridaceae
Dryopteridaceae, the shield-fern family, the largest fern family with over 2100 species; systematics revised in 2025 into seven subfamilies and 24 genera including Pseudarachniodes, with a sparse fossil record from Cretaceous amber and permineralized rhizomes.
Systematics of Pteridaceae
Systematics of Pteridaceae: classification of the maidenhair and brake fern family, over 1,000 species in five subfamilies, molecular phylogeny, cheilanthoid taxonomy, and recent PPG II reclassification.
Tasmanian ferns
Tasmanian ferns: the island's native ferns and fern allies, 101 species (81 ferns, 20 allies), mostly wet-forest plants shared with Victoria and New Zealand; about 19% under threat, with fourteen taxa covered by a 2011 recovery plan.
Taxonomy and systematics of Hymenophyllaceae
The taxonomy and systematics of Hymenophyllaceae, filmy and bristle ferns, was contested for over a century until Ebihara and Iwatsuki's 2006 revision recognized Hymenophyllum plus eight trichomanoid genera.
Telmatoblechnum
Telmatoblechnum is a genus of two swamp ferns in Blechnaceae, subfamily Stenochlaenoideae, split from Blechnum in 2014 by Perrie et al. Species: T. indicum (Asia to SW Pacific) and T. serrulatum (tropical and subtropical America).
Tender and indoor fern cultivation
Tender and indoor fern cultivation covers growing tropical ferns such as Boston ferns and maidenhairs in homes and glasshouses, where humidity around 40–50% matters most, with ferns second only among foliage plants in US sales.
The Fern Bulletin
The Fern Bulletin, also known as The Linnaean Fern Bulletin, was an American quarterly periodical on ferns edited by Willard Nelson Clute from 1892 to 1912.
Thelypteridaceae
Thelypteridaceae, the marsh fern family (Polypodiales), is a large cosmopolitan fern family of about 950 to 1,200 species, mostly tropical, with 37 genera recognized after the 2021 phylogenomic revision by Fawcett and Smith.
Thelypteridaceae of North America
Thelypteridaceae of North America describes the marsh and maiden fern family north of Mexico, where 3 genera and 25 species occur, mostly wetland ferns of marshes, bogs, and wet woods.