Blechnum insularum
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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
Blechnaceae
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Scientific Name
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Description
Species Description - Rhizome massive, erect, usually epiphytic, up to 50 cm long, clothed at apex with numerous rigid, lustrous, lance-linear scales ca. 10-15 mm long and up to 2.5 mm broad at base, dark brown with pale margins. Mature sterile fronds up to 1 m long; stipes much shorter than the blades and beset with several pairs of wartlike vestigial pinnae. Sterile blades elliptic-oblong, reaching 70 cm in length, 17-40 cm broad, abruptly reduced at base, and short-acuminate at apex with an elongate terminal pinna; rhachis clothed with a few reddish-brown fibrillose scales; pinnae up to 20 pairs or more, altemate, more or less lancelinear, 1.5-2.5 cm broad, with a narrowly acuminate, often falcate apex, the margins entire, flat; tissue firmly chartaceous, paler beneath, the veins rather close, mostly 0.6-0.8 mm apart, usually 1-forked near base. Fertile fronds longer than the sterile; pinnae narrowly linear, 3-5 mm broad; indusium brown, deeply and often finely lacerate with age.
Distribution and Ecology - General Distribution. Puerto Rico and the Lesser Antilles. Distribution in Puerto Rico. Occurs in the Siena de Luquillo and the Cordillera Central; recorded from Ceiba, Jayuya, Naguabo, and Rio Grande, Habitat. O n mossy trunks and limbs of trees in wet montane forest at high elevations (800-1300 m), rare.
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Discussion
Type. Morton 5822, from Cumberland Mountain, St. Vincent (US).
Syn. Lomaria boryana of Jenman, Fems Brit. W . Ind. 139. 1909, in part, not Willdenow in Linnaeus, 1810.
Struthiopteris underwoodiana of Maxon, Sci. Surv. Porto Rico & Virgin Is. VI: 454. 1926, in part, as to ref Puerto Rico, not Broadhurst, 1912.