Ophioglossum palmatum L.
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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
Ophioglossaceae
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Scientific Name
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Description
Species Description - Plants epiphytic; rhizome cylindric, 1-2.5 cm long, 1-2 cm thick, densely clothed with yellowish- brown hairlike scales, and producing numerous fleshy roots. Fronds several, arching or laxly pendent, up to 50 cm long (rarely to 75 cm); Stipes 5-40 cm long. Expanded blades 4-30 cm broad, narrowly to broadly obdeltate and palmately lobed, the lobes few (2-10), often unequal, usually simple and entire (rarely forked), the apex blunt to acute or acuminate-attenuate and somewhat ribbon-like. Tissue bright green, glabrous, with irregularly hexagonal venation. Sporophylls 1-15 to a fertile frond, b o m e in a row toward the apex of the stipe below base of the blade, with individual stalks 0.2-6 cm long and linear-oblong fertile spikes 1-3 cm long, these having 10-60 pairs of fused sporangia. Spores closely pitted-verrucose, 45-60 µm in diam.
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Discussion
Lectotype. Plumier, Traite foug. Amer., t. 163, based on material originally found at Le Fond de Baudin, nr. Leogane, Haiti.
Syn, Cheiroglossa palmata (Linnaeus) K. Presl, Suppl. tent, pterid. 57. 1845.
Ophioderma palmata (Linnaeus) Nakai, Bot. Mag. (Tokyo) 39: 193. 1925.
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Distribution
General Distribution. Widespread in the neotropics