Habit: Plant in soil or rock crevices; rhizome short- to long-creeping, scales overlapped, narrowly linear, light- to red- or medium-brown, often with dark mid-stripe.
Leaf: erect, persistent, < 1 m; stipes +- cylindric, generally dark or red-brown to +- black, +- shiny, glabrous; blade 1--4-pinnate; segments generally stalked, generally free, linear to rounded, lobed or not, often folded lengthwise when dried; veins generally free.
Sporangia: in +- continuous, submarginal bands, among a +- white to +- yellow exudate or not; segment margin generally recurved, generally modified; spores tan to light yellow.
Species In Genus: +- 35 species: tropics, temperate, few in Europe, 0 in Asia.
Etymology: (Greek: dusky, from blue-gray leaves)
Note: Occasionally cultivated. Molecular data suggest
Pellaea in the sense of Tryon (1957) is polyphyletic with monophyletic
Astrolepis and
Pellaea sect.
Platyloma, as well as elements of
Paragymnopteris and
Paraceterach nested within (Kirkpatrick, 2007).
Jepson eFlora Author: Ruth E.B. Kirkpatrick, Alan R. Smith, Thomas Lemieux & Edward Alverson
Reference: Kirkpatrick 2007 Syst Bot 32:504--518
Unabridged Reference: Kirkpatrick, R.E.B. 2007. Investigating the monophyly of Pellaea (Pteridaceae) in the context of a phylogenetic analysis of cheilanthoid ferns. Syst Bot 32:504--518; Tryon 1957 Ann Missouri Bot Gard 44(2):125--193Index of California Plant Names (ICPN; linked via the Jepson Online Interchange)Key to Pellaea
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