Thelypteris hastata (Fée) Proctor

  • Authority

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

  • Family

    Thelypteridaceae

  • Scientific Name

    Thelypteris hastata (Fée) Proctor

  • Description

    Species Description - Rhizome short-creeping, 3-6 mm thick (excluding stipe bases), bearing at apex a small, dense tuft of lustrous brown, minutely stellate-puberulous, deltate-lanceolate scales 3-4 mm long. Fronds slightly dimorphic, 40-85 cm long, the fertile more rigidly erect and with relatively longer stipes; stipes of fertile fronds 15-45 cm long, minutely stellate-puberulous; blades 25-55 cm long, 15-27 cm broad, abruptly narrowed distally to a hastate, lobed, elongate apex; rhachis and costae stellate-pubemlous on both sides, the adaxial surface otherwise glabrous, beneath the vascular parts ofthe pinnae fumished with simple and forked hairs; pinnae 4-9 pairs, linearoblong to oblanceolate, acuminate, the upper ones semiadnate; costules pinnately branched with about 6 pairs of veins, the lower two or three pairs united alternately into a flexuous veinlet mnning to the sinus. Sori inframedial, in two rows between sinus veinlets; indusium absent; sporangia setulose with minute forked hairs.

  • Discussion

    Basionym. Goniopteris hastata Fee, Mem. foug. 11: 65, t. 18, fig 1. 1866. (Part of fig. 1 transposed with part of fig. 2.)

    Type. L'Herminier in 1861, from Guadeloupe (RB; isotypes B, P).

    Syn. Nephrodium hastatum (Fee) Jenman, J. Bot. 17: 261. 1879.

    Bryopteris hastata (Fee) Urban, Symb. antill. 4: 21. 1903.

    Two varieties of Thelypteris hastata occur in Puerto Rico, one of these common, the other extremely rare. They can be distinguished as follows:

    a. Blades oblanceolate or oblong-oblanceolate, widest above the middle, less than 23 cm broad; pinnae less than 2.5 cm broad, with margins subentire to crenate

    34a. var. hastata.

    a. Blades deltate to broadly ovate-deltate, widest at base or below the middle, more than 25 cm broad; pinnae more than 2,5 cm broad, the margins distinctly lobed

    34b. var, heterodoxa.