326 articles
Thelypteridaceae of the Neotropics
Thelypteridaceae of the Neotropics surveys the marsh fern family across Central and South America and the Caribbean, where about 900 species show an Andean-centered diversity pattern.
Thelypteris
Thelypteris (marsh ferns) is a large, cosmopolitan genus of terrestrial ferns in Thelypteridaceae, established by Schmidel in 1763, with roughly 900–1,200 species and a controversial, much-split generic classification.
Thelypteris palustris
Thelypteris palustris, the marsh fern (eastern marsh fern), is a deciduous Thelypteridaceae wetland fern native from Central Canada to Mexico and temperate Eurasia, with subspecies palustris and pubescens, hairless pinnate fronds, and rounded sori.
Threatened quillworts
Threatened quillworts, genus Isoëtes (Isoetaceae), ancient aquatic and terrestrial lycopsids; about 38% of aquatic species threatened, with eutrophication, pollution, habitat loss, and drought driving declines in Europe, China, India, and North America.
Todea and Leptopteris (southern royal ferns)
Todea and Leptopteris, the leptopteroid clade of royal ferns (Osmundaceae), are Southern Hemisphere ferns with laminar fertile pinnules, sister to Osmunda, with fossils from the Late Permian onward.
Todea barbara
Todea barbara, the Austral king fern or hard todea, is an arborescent Osmundaceae fern of southern Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, with trunk to 1 m, sori-free sporangia covering lower pinnae, and Nationally Vulnerable status in New Zealand.
Tree fern
Tree ferns are ferns, mostly in the order Cyatheales (~600 species, 7–8 families), that grow trunk-like upright rhizomes mantled in adventitious roots rather than wood; Cyatheaceae holds ~90% of species, with Gondwanan origins and CITES Appendix II trade regulation.
Tree fern cultivation
Tree fern cultivation is the horticulture of arborescent ferns, grown for their fibrous trunks and crowns of large fronds, with care centered on the trunk and crown.
Tree fern cultivation: Dicksonia and Dicksoniaceae in horticulture
Tree fern cultivation in temperate gardens centers on Dicksonia antarctica, the soft tree fern, sold as harvested trunk logs that regrow fronds and need daily watering and winter crown protection.
Tree fern forest ecology
Tree fern forest ecology is the study of forests where tree ferns dominate, as in New Zealand and Australia, where they filter seedlings, host epiphytes, and colonize after disturbance.
Triassic–Jurassic fern spore abnormalities
Triassic–Jurassic fern spore abnormalities are malformed fossil spores, up to 70% in some samples, marking environmental stress at the end-Triassic extinction about 201.6 million years ago.
Trichomanes
Trichomanes is a mainly Neotropical genus of filmy ferns (Hymenophyllaceae), type T. crispum, published 1753, with tubular sori, chromosome base number x = 32, and a narrow modern circumscription after molecular splitting of Trichomanes s.l. into eight genera.
Understory
Understory: the forest vegetation layer beneath the canopy, including shrubs, herbs, ferns, and bryophytes; shaped by overstory light, buffers microclimate, drives regeneration, nutrient cycling, and carbon storage.
Vandenboschia speciosa
Vandenboschia speciosa (Killarney fern, Trichomanes speciosum), a Hymenophyllaceae fern of Atlantic Europe and Macaronesia, with perennial independent gametophytes, a 10.5 Gb tetraploid genome, and EU Habitats Directive protection.
Vegetative reproduction in ferns
Vegetative reproduction in ferns is asexual reproduction without spores, using structures such as creeping rhizomes, frond-tip buds, bulbils, root buds, and gametophyte gemmae to grow identical new plants.
Vittaria
Vittaria (shoestring ferns), a genus of eight accepted epiphytic fern species in Pteridaceae, native to tropical America and Africa; narrowed by molecular work after Old World species moved to Haplopteris.
Vittaria appalachiana
Vittaria appalachiana, the Appalachian shoestring fern (Appalachian gametophyte), is a Pteridaceae fern of the eastern United States existing only as a gametophyte, reproducing via gemmae, with no sporophyte ever observed; autopolyploid, n=120, Pleistocene origin.
Vittarioideae
Vittarioideae (vittarioid or shoestring ferns), formerly Vittariaceae, is a Pteridaceae subfamily of 100–130 species of simplified tropical epiphytic ferns, sister to Adiantum, with about 11–12 genera including Antrophyum, Haplopteris, Vittaria, and Antrophyopsis.
Wardian case
Wardian case, invented by Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward in 1829, a sealed wood-and-glass plant transporter and terrarium forerunner that enabled global plant transfer, including tea, rubber, and cinchona, from 1833 until the 1960s.
Water transport and hydraulics of Equisetum
Water transport and hydraulics of Equisetum describes how horsetails, lacking vessels and secondary growth, move water through primary xylem and internal canals, with root pressure driving guttation and embolism refilling.
Wilhelm Barthlott
Wilhelm Barthlott (born 1946) is a German botanist at Bonn who discovered the lotus effect of self-cleaning superhydrophobic plant surfaces (1997, with Neinhuis) and the Salvinia effect of underwater air retention (2010).
Willard Nelson Clute
Willard Nelson Clute (1869–1950), American botanist and pteridologist, co-founder of the American Fern Society, editor of the Fern Bulletin and American Botanist, author of Our Ferns in their Haunts.
Wood ferns of East Asia and Malesia
Wood ferns of East Asia and Malesia covers the Dryopteridaceae, the largest fern family with over 2,100 species, whose diversity peaks in temperate East Asia and tropical Southeast Asian mountains.
Wood ferns of Europe
Wood ferns of Europe, the genus Dryopteris, includes 27 species native to the continent. They are known for their complex evolution and thrive in shady boreal-temperate forests.
Wood ferns of North America
Wood ferns of North America, genus Dryopteris, are ferns in the Dryopteridaceae family. They include 13 to 14 sexual species and 29 named sterile hybrids.
Woodsia
Woodsia (cliff ferns) is a genus of small to medium sized ferns in the family Aspleniaceae, comprising 52 accepted species, first published by Robert Brown in 1810.