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
- An early group of vascular plants that produce spores (reproductive cells)
- 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)
- 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 / Maiden-hair 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)
- Brake / Maiden-hair family (Pteridaceae)
Specific References
American Fern Society. About Ferns.
U.S. Forest Service, United States Department of Agriculture. What Are Ferns?.
