Hymenophyllopsis
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Authority
Maguire, Bassett. 1984. The Botany of the Guyana Highland - Part XII. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 38: 1-84.
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Family
Cyatheaceae
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Scientific Name
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Description
Genus Description - Plants epipetric on cliflf faces and ledges or terrestrial at the bases of boulders. Rhizomes short- to long-creeping, scaly (often densely so), the scales linear to lanceolate, stramineous or pale reddish-brown to dark brown. Fronds approximate to crowded, up to 30 cm long; stipes sulcate, bisulcate, or terete, brown to atropurpureous, scaly at least at the base with scales similar to those of the rhizome; laminae usually rhombic or narrowly rhombic, pinnate-pinnatifid to 3-pinnatepinnatifid; rachises alate or not, glabrous in most species or villous or bearing catenate hairs or small scales; pinnules or ultimate segments narrow, usually linear, bearing a single, central vein, lacking stomata; soral values entire to lobed or deeply lacerate, chlorophyllous, extrorse, marginal or submarginal, persistent; sporangia few in each sorus, the annulus broad, complete, and vertical; spores tetrahedral, globose.
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Discussion
Type. Hymenophyllum defectum Baker in Hooker {=Hymenophyllopsis dejecta (Baker in Hooker) Goebel].
Hymenophyllopsis is k n o w n at present to contain eight species, of which three are newly described in this paper. Several ofthe species are k n o w n from only one or two table mountains in the Guayana Highland, and most are confined to the table mountains of eastem Venezuela. Recent collections by J. Steyermark and his associates have added materially to our knowledge of the genus, which was heretofore based largely on specimens collected by B. Maguire and his collaborators. Further collecting of specimens of Hymenophyllopsis is likely to widen the known distribution of some of the species and m a y even bring additional new species to light.