Pellaea wrightiana |
Pteridaceae |
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Wright's cliffbrake |
brake family, maidenhair fern family |
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Habit | Plants perennial [annual], on rock or terrestrial, of small (rarely large) stature. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stems | compact, ascending, stout, 5–10 mm diam.; scales bicolored, linear-subulate, 0.1–0.3 mm wide, centers black, thick, margins brown, thin, erose-dentate. |
compact to creeping, branched or unbranched, dictyostelic, bearing hairs and/or scales. |
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Leaves | monomorphic, clustered on stem, 6–40 cm; croziers sparsely villous. |
monomorphic to dimorphic, circinate or noncircinate in bud. |
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Petiole(s) | dark brown, lustrous, flattened or slightly grooved adaxially, without prominent articulation lines. |
usually with persistent scales proximally, lacking spines; vascular bundles 1–several, roundish or crescent-shaped in cross section. |
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Blade(s) | linear-oblong, 2-pinnate proximally, 1.5–5 cm wide; rachis brown throughout, straight, shallowly grooved adaxially, usually glabrous. |
1–6-pinnate, without laminar buds. |
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Ultimate segments | narrowly oblong, 5–20 mm, leathery, glabrous; margins recurved on fertile segments, usually covering less than 1/2 abaxial surface, borders whitish, crenulate; apex mucronate. |
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Pinnae | perpendicular to rachis or slightly ascending, not decurrent on rachis, usually with 3–9 ultimate segments; costae straight, 2–20 mm, usually shorter than ultimate segments. |
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Veins | of ultimate segments obscure. |
pinnate or parallel in ultimate segments of blades, simple or forked, free or infrequently anastomosing in complex patterns. |
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Indusia | (when present) formed by reflexed, recurved, or revolute leaf margin (false indusium). |
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Sori | borne abaxially on veins, often confluent with age and forming a continuous submarginal band, or sporangia densely covering abaxial surface (acrostichoid); receptacle not or only slightly elevated. |
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Sporangia | long-stalked, containing 64 spores, intermixed with sparse farina-producing glands. |
stalk of 2–3 rows of cells; annulus vertical, interrupted by stalk; spores 64 or 32 (rarely 16) per sporangium. |
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Spores | all 1 kind, brown, black, or gray (rarely yellow), globose to globose-tetrahedral or trigonal, occasionally with prominent equatorial ridge, trilete, or trigonal, variously ornamented (usually cristate or rugose). |
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Gametophytes | green, aboveground, obcordate to reniform, sometimes asymmetric, usually glabrous (glandular-farinose in Notholaena); archegonia and antheridia borne on abaxial surface, antheridia 3-celled. |
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Indument | on petioles, rachises, costae, and blades, rarely absent or commonly of hairs, glands, and/or scales, occasionally of white or yellow farina. |
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2n | = 116. |
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Pellaea wrightiana |
Pteridaceae |
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Phenology | Sporulating summer–fall. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Habitat | Cliffs and rocky slopes, on a variety of acidic to mildly basic substrates | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Elevation | 300–2900 m (1000–9500 ft) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Distribution |
AZ; CO; NC; NM; OK; TX; UT; n Mexico
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Worldwide |
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Discussion | W. H. Wagner Jr. (1965) suggested that Pellaea wrightiana was a fertile allotetraploid hybrid between P. truncata (as P. longimucronata) and P. ternifolia. This hypothesis has been confirmed by isozyme analyses (M. D. Windham 1988). Pellaea wrightiana is therefore treated as a distinct species rather than a variety of P. ternifolia. This tetraploid species hybridizes with P. truncata and P. ternifolia subsp. arizonica to produce sterile triploids and tetraploids with intermediate morphology and malformed spores. Pellaea wrightiana has also hybridized with P. atropurpurea to form a rare apogamous pentaploid known only from western Oklahoma. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Considerable disagreement exists concerning the circumscription and proper name of this family. The taxa comprising the Pteridaceae in this treatment were assigned to the Sinopteridaceae and Pteridaceae by D. B. Lellinger (1985) and were included in five families by R. E. G. Pichi-Sermolli (1977). The broad concept followed here is similar (except for the exclusion of Ceratopteris) to that espoused by R. M. Tryon and A. F. Tryon (1982), who applied the name Pteridaceae to the group. Until very recently, the newer name Adiantaceae was more commonly used. As represented in North America, Pteridaceae comprise three major evolutionary lines (the adiantoids, the pteroids, and the cheilanthoids). Characteristics holding the family together include abaxial (usually submarginal) sori that lack indusia or are protected by a reflexed or revolute leaf margin, spores that are usually globose-tetrahedral and trilete, and chromosome base numbers of 30 or 29 (rarely 27). The xeric-adapted members of the family (particularly the cheilanthoids) have undergone extensive parallel and convergent evolution, and they have frustrated attempts to produce a natural generic classification based on macromorphologic characteristics alone. Although some workers have aggregated species into a few large genera (e.g., J. T. Mickel 1979b), most tend to recognize smaller segregate genera based on a combination of morphologic, chromosomal, and biochemical data. The latter approach seems to provide a more useful, evolutionarily informative classification and is the one adopted here. Aspidotis and Notholaena are maintained here as distinct from Cheilanthes, and three recently described genera (Argyrochosma, Astrolepis, and Pentagramma) have been incorporated into the treatment. The reasons for these changes in generic circumscription are discussed under the individual genera. Genera ca. 40, species ca. 1000 (13 genera, 90 species in the flora). (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 2. | FNA vol. 2, p. 122. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Parent taxa | Pteridaceae > Pellaea | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sibling taxa | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Synonyms | P. ternifolia var. wrightiana | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Name authority | Hooker: Sp. Fil. 2: 142. (1858) | E. D. M. Kirchner | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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