Polypodium pseudoaureum Cav.

  • Authority

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

  • Family

    Polypodiaceae

  • Scientific Name

    Polypodium pseudoaureum Cav.

  • Description

    Species Description - Rhizome creeping, 5-8 mm thick (excluding scales), densely clothed with numerous goldento reddish-brown or tawny, denticulate scales mostly 6-10 mm long, these linear-attenuate or filiform from a small ovate, dark-centered base. Fronds arching or pendent, 22-105 cm long (rarely more), seasonally deciduous; stipes shorter than the blades, 10-42 cm long, lustrous reddish-brown, glabrous. Blades deltate, ovate-oblong, or oblong, 14-63 cm long, 9-38 cm broad, deeply and coarsely pinnatifid, with a long terminal segment like the lateral ones; segments 5-18 pairs, ligulate, 1-2 cm broad (rarely wider), obtuse to acuminate at apex, joined at base by a rhachis-wing 6-10 mm wide; margins slightly wavy or minutely crenate to subentire; veins mostly reticulate, forming a row of oblong to narrowly obdeltate costal areoles without included veinlets, then a single series of larger areoles with included veinlets, these mostly two per areole and joined at their tips, then (toward margin) several smaller but inegular series of areoles without included veinlets, terminating along the margin in an inegular row of small adaxial hydathodes, these on very short free veinlet tips or at the junction of two veinlets, and each secreting a minute white scale of calcium carbonate; tissue green or often more or less glaucous. Sori round or oval, inframedial, located at the junction of two intra-areolate veinlets.

  • Discussion

    Fig. 94.

    Type. Nee, from an unknown locality (MA, not seen, cited by Christensen, Dansk Bot. Ark. 9(3): 12. 1937).

    Syn. Polypodium areolatum Humboldt & Bonpland ex Willdenow in Linnaeus, Sp. pl. 5: 172. 1810. (Type. Humboldt & Bonpland, from Cumana, Venezuela {Herb. Willd. 19645, B.)

    Goniophlebium areolatum (Humboldt & Bonpland ex Willdenow) K. Presl, Tent, pterid. 186. 1836.

    Phlebodium areolatum (Humboldt & Bonpland ex Willdenow) J. Smith, J. Bot. (Hooker) 4: 59. 1841.

    Polypodium aureum var. areolatum (Humboldt & Bonpland ex Willdenow) Baker in Hooker & Baker, Syn. fil. 347. 1867.

    Polypodium aureum var. reductum Jenman, Bull, Bot. Dept. Jamaica n.s. 4:138. 1897; Ferns Brit. W. Ind. 292. 1908. (Type. Jenman ?, from Jamaica, not seen.)

  • Distribution

    General Distribution. Florida, Greater Antilles, Guadeloupe, continental tropical America, and the Galapagos Islands.

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