Proctor, George R. 1989. Ferns of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 53: 1-389.
Dryopteridaceae
Species Description - Plants tufted; rhizome erect or ascending, 2-4 mm thick (excluding scales and stipe bases), at apex bearing a dense tuft of erect, light brown, narrowly linear-acuminate scales 1.5-3.5 mm long, with irregularly denticulate margins. Sterile fronds closely crowded, erect, ascending, or spreading, mostly 3-7 cm long, clothed throughout with scattered pale- or yellowish-brown hairlike scales (each from an enlarged bullate base); stipes mostly 1.2-3.5 cm long, covered with very minute glandular hairs in addition to the spreading, hairlike scales; phyllopodia weakly defined; blades usually oblong or elliptic, or sometimes obovate, mostly 1.5-3.5 cm long, 0.5-1.5 cm broad, obtuse at apex, acute to long-cuneate at base; veins widely spaced, simple or once-forked, with enlarged tips terminating ca. 0.5 mm from the margins; tissue thin-herbaceous, light green, more or less translucent, freely clothed throughout with persistent hairlike scales. Fertile fronds often several, 3-7 cm long, long-stipitate; blades roundish to oblong-ovate, 1-2 cm long, 0.7-1.5 cm broad, somewhat acute or retuse.
Basionym. Acrostichum spatulatum Bory, Voy. iles Afrique 1: 363, t. 20, fig. 1. 1804.
Type. Bory, from Reunion (Herb. Bory, P, not seen; isotype RB).
Syn. Acrostichum piloselloides K. Presl, Reliq. haenk. 1: 14, t. 2, fig. 1. 1825. (Type. Haenke, from Peru, PR, not seen.)
Elaphoglossum piloselloides (K. Presl) T. Moore, Index fil. 13. 1857.
Acrostichum pusillum Mettenius ex Kuhn, Linnaea 36: 43. 1869. (Type. Wright 794, from Cuba, isotypes NY, US.)
Elaphoglossum pusillum (Mettenius ex Kuhn) C. Christensen, Index filic. 314. 1905.
General Distribution. Greater and Lesser Antilles, continental tropical America, tropical Africa, India, Ceylon, and islands of the Indian Ocean. Distribution in Puerto Rico. Known from but a single locality. Maricao, 12 Jan 1914, Hess 213, 356 (US). Habitat. "Rotten tree trunks and mossy banks," probably at a middle elevation (ca. 400-600 m), very rare.
Puerto Rico South America| Africa| India Asia| Ceylon Asia|