Monographs Details:
Authority:

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

Dryopteridaceae
Description:

Species Description - Rhizome creeping, subflexuous, 3-5 mm thick (excluding scales and stipe bases), at apex bearing a dense tuft of light rusty-brown, narrowly deltate- attenuate scales 5-8 mm long, these with long, hairlike, often contorted tip and fibrilloseciliate margins, and with minute reddish-resinous glandular dots at scattered adjoining cellends in the lamina. Sterile fronds erect, close or somewhat apart, mostly 15-40 cm long, longstipitate; stipes shorter than or almost equalling the blades, 8-15 cm long, nearly naked; blades elliptic-oblong or lance-oblong, mostly 9-23 cm long, 3-5(-6) cm broad near or below the middle, obtuse or acutish at apex, abruptly cuneate and short-decurrent at base; surfaces at first bearing scattered, extremely minute, appressed, stellate scales, these soon falling; veins immersed, mostly once-forked, with slightly enlarged tips reaching the cartilaginous margins; tissue rigidly chartaceous, nearly opaque. Fertile fronds equalling or exceeding the sterile ones; stipes up to 20 cm long; blades lance-linear, 7-20 cm long, 1.3-2.6 cm broad, acuminate at apex, cuneate at base.

Discussion:

Basionym. Acrostichum martinicense Desv., Ges. Naturf. Freunde Berlin Mag. 5: 309. 1811.

Type. Without specified collector, ex Herb. Desvaux, from Martinique (P).

Syn. Acrostichum simplex of Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W.L 676. 1864, in part, not Swartz, 1788.

Acrostichum simplex [var.] "A" martinicense (Desvaux) Jenman, Fems Brit. W . Ind. 331. 1909, with regard to name.

Elaphoglossum underwoodianum Maxon, Sci. Surv. Porto Rico & Virgin Is. 6: 397. 1926. (Type. Hess 352, from Maricao, Puerto Rico, US.)

Distribution:

Haiti South America| Dominican Republic South America| Puerto Rico South America| West Indies|