Blechnaceae — Details

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Overview

Comprehensive Description

Description

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Terrestrial, epiphytic or lithophytic ferns. Rhizome widely creeping and often stoloniferous or suberect to erect, with scales. Stipe not articulated. Fronds pinnate or pinnatifid (rarely 2-pinnatifid), dimorphic, fertile strongly contracted. Young fronds often tinged with red. Veins free, simple or forked or anastomosing without included veinlets, always ending near the margin. Indumentum composed of bracts and unicellular hairs occurring on the rhizome, the axes and the lamina surfaces. Sori short and discontinuous or long and continuous, usually borne on a secondary vein parallel to the costa, between the costa and the margin. Indusium linear, continuous or discontinuous, mostly entire, opening towards the costa, or exindusiate.
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Source: Flora of Zimbabwe

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Wikipedia

Blechnaceae

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Blechnaceae is a family of from two to nine genera[1] and between 240-260 species of ferns, with a cosmopolitan distribution, in the eupolypods II clade of the order Polypodiales,[2] in the class Polypodiopsida.[3]

Most are ground dwelling, some are climbers, such as Stenochlaena. A characteristic feature of many species is that the young opening fronds are usually tinged with red.

Genera

The Blechnaceae includes the following genera. However Blechnum is probably paraphyletic, with Doodia and possibly others embedded within it.[2] So it's likely that the Blechnaceae genera will be combined into as few as two genera.[1]

(=) Lorinseria C.Presl 1851

Phylogenic relationships

The following phylogram shows a likely relationship among Blechnaceae and the other families within eupolypods II, based on Lehtonen, 2011,[4] and Rothfels & al., 2012.[2]

eupolypods II

Cystopteridaceae





Rhachidosoraceae




Diplaziopsidaceae




Aspleniaceae



Hemidictyaceae







Thelypteridaceae




Woodsiaceae





Onocleaceae



Blechnaceae




Athyriaceae







References

  1. ^ a b c Maarten J. M. Christenhusz, Xian-Chun Zhang & Harald Schneider (2011). "A linear sequence of extant families and genera of lycophytes and ferns". Phytotaxa 19: 7–54. http://www.mapress.com/phytotaxa/content/2011/f/pt00019p054.pdf. 
  2. ^ a b c Carl J. Rothfels, Anders Larsson, Li-Yaung Kuo, Petra Korall, Wen- Liang Chiou, Kathleen M. Pryer (2012). "Overcoming Deep Roots, Fast Rates, and Short Internodes to Resolve the Ancient Rapid Radiation of Eupolypod II Ferns". Systematic Biology 61 (1): 70. http://sysbio.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/01/04/sysbio.sys001.short?rss=1. 
  3. ^ Alan R. Smith, Kathleen M. Pryer, Eric Schuettpelz, Petra Korall, Harald Schneider & Paul G. Wolf (2006). "A classification for extant ferns". Taxon 55 (3): 705–731. http://www.pryerlab.net/publication/fichier749.pdf. 
  4. ^ Samuli Lehtonen (2011). "Towards Resolving the Complete Fern Tree of Life". PLoS ONE 6 (10): e24851. doi:10.1371. http://www.sci.utu.fi/sivustot/amazon/publications/articles/pdf_pub/Lehtonen_2011_PLoS1.pdf. 
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