326 articles
Mating systems and population genetics of fern reproduction
The mating systems of ferns describe how hermaphroditic gametophytes self, inbreed, or outcross; most homosporous ferns predominantly outcross, contrary to the textbook image of habitual selfing.
Megalastrum
Megalastrum Holttum is a genus of terrestrial ferns in Dryopteridaceae, segregated from Ctenitis and allied to Lastreopsis and Rumohra. Native from Mexico to southern South America with Old World outliers; about 30 to 90 species depending on treatment.
Melaleuca acacioides
Melaleuca acacioides F.Muell. is a paperbark tree or shrub (Myrtaceae) of southern New Guinea and northern Australia, 1.5–10 m tall with Acacia-like foliage, published in 1862 and rated least concern.
Melpomene and Terpsichore (ferns)
Melpomene and Terpsichore are two small genera of Neotropical grammitid ferns, small epiphytes of montane cloud forests named for Greek muses and described in consecutive years, 1992 and 1993.
Montane and alpine fern ecology
Montane and alpine fern ecology is the study of how elevation filters ferns, whose richness peaks in humid mid-elevation cloud forests and falls toward cold summits.
Myriopteris
Myriopteris, a genus of about 47 xeric-adapted lip ferns (Pteridaceae, Cheilanthoideae) of North and Central America, resurrected by Grusz & Windham 2013 from polyphyletic Cheilanthes; type M. marsupianthes, sister to the pellaeid clade.
Nardoo
Nardoo (ngardu) is a starchy flour Aboriginal Australians ground from the hard sporocarps of the aquatic fern Marsilea drummondii; unprocessed, its thiaminase killed the explorers Burke and Wills in 1861.
Nephrolepis
Nephrolepis (sword ferns, Boston ferns) is a pantropical fern genus of Nephrolepidaceae, about 19 to 30 species, with kidney-shaped indusia, stolons, and the 1894 'Bostoniensis' Boston fern cultivar.
Nephrolepis exaltata
Nephrolepis exaltata, sword fern or Boston fern (N. exaltata 'Bostoniensis'), a tropical American fern grown as a foliage crop and houseplant; arching-frond mutant found in Boston in the 1890s, IUCN least concern.
Oceaniopteris
Oceaniopteris is a genus of ferns in the family Blechnaceae, erected in 2016 to hold species formerly placed in Blechnum; its species are found mainly in Oceania.
Onychium
Onychium (claw ferns) is a genus of 12 accepted terrestrial fern species in Pteridaceae subfamily Pteridoideae, native from NE tropical Africa through tropical and subtropical Asia to N Australia, sister to Actiniopteris, with submarginal continuous sori protected by a reflexed false indusium.
Ophioglossaceae
Ophioglossaceae, the adder's tongue fern family (Martinov, 1820), are eusporangiate ferns with trophophore and sporophore frond segments, subterranean mycorrhizal gametophytes, and record chromosome counts up to 1440 in Ophioglossum reticulatum.
Ophioglossum
Ophioglossum, the adder's-tongue ferns (adder's-tongue), a cosmopolitan genus of about 50-64 simple-leaved ferns in Ophioglossaceae, known for the highest chromosome counts of any organism, 2n up to 1,260.
Osmunda
Osmunda, royal ferns of Osmundaceae, a cosmopolitan genus of 13 wetland fern species published by Linnaeus in 1753, known as fossils since the Late Triassic about 220 million years ago.
Osmunda japonica
Osmunda japonica (zenmai, ゼンマイ; 紫萁; 고비), the Japanese royal fern, is an Osmundaceae fern from Pakistan to Sakhalin and Indochina with dimorphic 2-pinnate fronds, 2n=44, edible spring fiddleheads, and hybrids O. hybrida, O. × intermedia, O. × nipponica, and O. × mildei.
Osmunda regalis
Osmunda regalis, the royal fern, is an Old World Osmundaceae fern native from Europe and Macaronesia to Africa and Madagascar, hemidimorphic with apical fertile pinnae, IUCN least concern, and distinct from American O. spectabilis.
Osmundaceae
Osmundaceae (royal ferns), order Osmundales, a family of leptosporangiate ferns sister to all other leptosporangiates; fewer than 20 species in four to six genera but the richest fossil record of any extant fern group, from the Permian onward.
Osmundastrum
Osmundastrum, cinnamon fern (formerly Osmunda cinnamomea), a monotypic royal-fern genus (Osmundaceae) split from Osmunda on molecular evidence; its single species is an eastern Asia–eastern North America disjunct wetland fern with dimorphic fronds.
Osmundastrum pulchellum
Osmundastrum pulchellum, originally Osmunda pulchella, an extinct royal fern from the Pliensbachian (Lower Jurassic) of Korsaröd, Skåne, Sweden; a probable precursor of modern Osmundastrum known from a permineralized rhizome.
Palynology
Palynology, also called pollen analysis, studies pollen, spores, dinoflagellates, and other organic-walled palynomorphs. Launched by von Post in 1916, it spans paleopalynology, actuopalynology, forensics, honey analysis, and oil exploration.
Parablechnum
Parablechnum C.Presl is a fern genus in Blechnaceae, the family's most diverse with about 65 species, pantropical with Neotropical and Australasian centers; dimorphic 1-pinnate fronds, resurrected by Gasper et al. 2016.
Parablechnum wattsii
Parablechnum wattsii (hard water-fern), formerly Blechnum wattsii Tindale 1963, is a Blechnaceae fern native to eastern and southeastern Australia (NSW, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria), moved to Parablechnum in 2016.
Pecluma
Pecluma M.G.Price is a Neotropical fern genus in Polypodiaceae, Polypodioideae, segregated from Polypodium in 1983; about 40-52 species from Florida to northern Argentina, with several Polypodium species nested within it and Miocene Dominican amber fossils.
Pecopteris
Pecopteris, a Brongniart 1822 form genus of late Paleozoic fern foliage, chiefly marattialean tree ferns like Psaronius; common Carboniferous-Permian fossil with whole-base pinnules, stretched 350% in a Rhode Island specimen.
Pentagramma triangularis
Pentagramma triangularis, the gold-back fern (gold fern, goldenback fern), a perennial Pteridaceae fern native from Vancouver Island to Baja California, with white or yellow farina on frond undersides, rock-crevice habitat, and a 1990 taxonomic revision splitting it from Pityrogramma.
Phlebodium aureum
Phlebodium aureum (golden polypody, blue star fern; syn. Polypodium aureum) is an epiphytic Polypodiaceae fern native from the southeastern USA to South America, with golden-scaled creeping rhizomes, blue-green pinnatifid fronds, allotetraploid hybrid origin, and common houseplant use.
Pilularia
Pilularia (pillworts) is a genus of seven accepted species of heterosporous aquatic ferns in Marsileaceae, Salviniales, with thread-like bladeless leaves and spherical four-valved sporocarps; sister to Regnellidium, with Marsilea outside that clade.
Pilularia globulifera
Pilularia globulifera (pillwort, Pillenfarn) is a tiny aquatic fern of Marsileaceae, native from Europe to Kazakhstan and Ethiopia, with thread-like leaves and 3 mm round sporocarps; globally Least Concern but nationally scarce and declining in Britain.
Pinnation
Pinnation, also called pinnate division, is the feather-like arrangement of leaflets (pinnae, pinnules) along a central rachis; degrees run from once-pinnate to bipinnate, tripinnate, and pinnatifid, and are primary fern identification characters.
Platycerium
Platycerium, commonly called staghorn fern or elkhorn fern, is a pantropical genus of about 18 species of epiphytic ferns named for their antler-like fertile fronds.