Trichomanes
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Authority
Proctor, George R. 1989. Ferns of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 53: 1-389.
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Family
Hymenophyllaceae
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Scientific Name
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Description
Species Description - Epiphytic, epipetric, or terrestrial fems of various habit, either intricate and minute with filiform rhizomes, scandent with distant fronds of small to medium size, fasciculate with short erect rhizomes, or terrestrial with short-creeping to erect rhizomes and strong, wiry roots. Fronds subsessile to longstipitate, erect, spreading, or pendent, sometimes densely overlapping in mats. Blades various, from minute, orbicular, entire, and flabellate-veined to elongate, much subdivided, and pinnately veined; glabrous or hairy, the hairs simple, forked, or stellate, bome mostly on the margins and vascular parts. Sori immersed in tissue to entirely free, in shape tubular or narrowly cylindric-cuneate to salverform, the mouth usually tmncate and entire or sometimes with a bilobed apex; receptacle filiform, usually long-exserted with age, the sporangia borne at or near the base. Spores with surface more or less prominently papillate or echinate. Chromosomes: n = 9, 18, 32, 33, 34, 36, 64, 66, 68, 72, 128.
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Discussion
Type Species. Trichomanes scandens Linnaeus, of the Greater Antilles.
A large, diverse genus now thought to contain about 325 species, as a whole pantropical in distribution, with a few species occurring in temperate or wet cool-temperate areas. Some authors SpHt the group into numerous smaller genera, but I prefer to follow the classification presented by Morton (1968) in which the larger taxon is subdivided into subgenera and sections. In this book the sectional assignments will not be indicated. The generic name is derived from the Greek thrix, hair + manes, cup, alluding to the hairlike receptacle protmding from the cuplike involucre.
Special Literature. Wessels Boer, J. G. 1962. The New World species of Trichomanes sect. Didymoglossum and Microgonium. Acta Bot. Neerl. 11: 277-330, figs. 1-35.