Brake Family

Maiden-hair Family
Pteridaceae (ter-id-AY-see-ee)

Iconic Features

• Stalks usually dark and wiry
• Fronds 2-pinnate or more
• Sori usually hidden under frond margin

Description (Jepson)

• Ferns (Polypodiopsida)
  • An early group of vascular plants that produce spores (reproductive cells)
    • Produce no flowers or seeds
    • Fossil records date back almost 400 million years, versus 130 million years for flowering plants
• Perennial herbs
  • Grow from creeping or erect rhizomes (horizontal underground stems)
• Fronds (leaves)
  • Almost always compound (divided into leaflets), with 1-6 levels of division (1-6 pinnate)
  • Young fronds uncurl from tight spirals called fiddleheads
  • Stalks (petioles) generally dark and wiry
• Sori
  • Sori (singular: sorus) are clusters of spore-producing, sac-like structures called sporangia (singular: sporangium)
    • Sporangia sacs split open to catapult mature, microscopic spores, which are wind dispersed
  • Located usually in the curled-under margins of leaflets, sometimes along veins
  • Have no indusium (plural: indusia), a tissue flap sometimes covering immature sori

Notes

• Approximately 500 species worldwide
  • Includes maiden-hair, brake, and lace ferns
• Scientific name from the included genus Pteris, from the Greek for “fern”
• Common name from the Scandinavian for “bracken,” a coarse fern
• Represented by 3 species at Edgewood
• Edgewood has 7 fern species in 4 plant families
  • Brake family (Pteridaceae)
    • California maidenhair fern (Adiantum jordanii)
    • Coffee fern (Pellaea andromedifolia)
    • Goldback fern (Pentagramma triangularis)
  • Polypody family (Polypodiaceae)
    • California polypody (Polypodium californicum) 
  • Wood fern family  (Dryopteridaceae)
    • Coastal wood fern (Dryopteris arguta)
    • Western sword fern (Polystichum munitum)
  • Horsetail family (Equisetaceae)
    • Giant horsetail (Equisetum telmateia ssp. braunii)

Specific References

American Fern Society. About Ferns.

Pai, A. 2018, Dec. 28. Fantastic ferns and where to find them. Bay Nature.

U.S. Forest Service. What are ferns? Forest Service. United States Department of Agriculture.

General References

Calflora Database. 2014. Berkeley, California.

Calscape. 2018. California Native Plant Society.

Charters, M.L. 2015. California Plant Names: Latin and Greek Meanings and Derivations.

Charters, M.L. 2017. Southern California Wildflowers: Guide to the Pronunciation of Specific, Generic and Family Names.

Corelli, T. 2004. Flowering Plants of Edgewood Natural Preserve (2nd. ed.). Monocot Press, Half Moon Bay, California.

Elpel, T.J. 2013. Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification. HOPS Press, Pony, Montana.

Flora of North America. efloras.org.

Harris, J.G., and M.W. Harris. 2013. Plant Identification Terminology: An Illustrated Glossary. Spring Lake Publishing, Spring Lake, Utah.

Keator, G. 2009. California Plant Families. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California.

Native American Ethnobotany DB.

Regents of the University of California. Jepson eFlora. Jepson Herbarium. University of California, Berkeley.

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