Nephrolepis cordifolia (L.) C.Presl

  • Authority

    Proctor, George R. 1989. Ferns of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 53: 1-389.

  • Family

    Nephrolepidaceae

  • Scientific Name

    Nephrolepis cordifolia (L.) C.Presl

  • Description

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    Species Description - Plants (in Puerto Rico) usually terrestrial; stolons often (but not always) bearing small scaly tubers; rhizome ascending to erect, slender but woody, concealed by the densely clustered stipe bases, clothed toward the apex with orangebrown, linear-attenuate scales up to 10 mm long and ca. 0.5 mm wide, glabrous or nearly so but with long hairlike tips. Fronds erect, closely tufted, 30-75 cm long, the stipes much shorter than the blades, 4-17 cm long, densely but deciduously clothed (especially toward base) with numerous lax, pale brown, filiform-attenuate scales, these glabrous except at the abruptly expanded, blackish-centered, fibrillose-ciliate bases. Blades linear, of firm texture, commonly 25-50 cm long, mostly 2.5-5(-6) cm broad; rhachis bearing few to numerous lax, pale brown, glabrous, linearattenuate scales, these tending to be tufted at base of pinnae (but also scattered elsewhere); pinnae glabrous, sessile, mostly 40-75 to a side, oblong or narrowly deltate-oblong, usually 1.5-3 cm long 0.5-0.9 cm broad, obtuse or acutish at the apex and ,sometimes slightly falcate, inequilateral at the cordate, shortly auriculate base, the auricle often overlapping the rhachis; margins subentire to shallowly crenate; veins mostly 1 -forked. Sori supramedial; indusium firm, lunate or broadly reniform, the sinus broad and shallow or nearly obsolete.

  • Discussion

    Basionym. Polypodium cordifolium Linnaeus, Sp. pl. 2: 1089. 1753.

    Type. Petiver, Pter. Amer., t. l,fig. 11. This was copied by Petiver from Plumier, Traite foug. Amer., t. 71, which in tum was based on a plant found by Plumier in Hispaniola.

    Syn. Aspidium tuberosum Bory ex Willdenow in Linnaeus, Sp. pl. 5: 234. 1810. (Type. Bory, from Reunion, not seen.)

    Nephrodium tuberosum (Bory ex Willdenow) Desvaux, Mem. Soc. Linn. Paris 6: 252. 1827.

    Nephrolepis tuberosa (Bory ex Willdenow) K. Presl, Tent, pterid. 79. 1836.

  • Distribution

    General Distribution. Pantropical; often cultivated.