Common Name: BRAKE FAMILY
Habit: Perennial herb, in soil or on or among rocks; rhizome creeping to erect, scaly. Leaf: generally all +- alike (or of 2 kinds, fertile, sterile), generally < 50 cm, often < 25 cm; stipe generally thin, wiry, often dark, ×-section with vascular strands generally 1--3, less often many in circle; blade generally pinnate or +- palmate-pinnate (see Adiantum), often >= 2-compound, abaxially often with glands, +- powdery exudate, hairs, or scales; segments round, oblong, fan-shaped, or other, veins generally free. Sporangia: in sori or not, marginal, submarginal, or along veins, covered by recurved, often modified segment margins (false indusia) or not; true indusia 0; spores spheric, sides flat or not, scar with 3 radiating branches.
Genera In Family: +- 40 genera, 500 species: worldwide, especially dry areas. Note: CA members of Cheilanthes moved to the distantly related Myriopteris; Pellaea breweri to be moved as well, from a to-be-redefined Pellaea; traditional, often untenable limits of genera outside CA also being clarified using molecular phylogenetics.
eFlora Treatment Author: Ruth E.B. Kirkpatrick, Alan R. Smith & Thomas Lemieux, except as noted
Scientific Editor: Alan R. Smith, Thomas J. Rosatti.

Common Name: GOLDBACK or SILVERBACK FERN
Habit: Plant in soil or rock crevices; rhizome short-creeping-decumbent, generally 3--5(8) mm wide, scales lance-linear, mid-stripe dark. Leaf: stipe 5--20(32) cm, 0.5--2(3) mm wide, generally brown to red-brown (+- black); blade generally 2--3-pinnate, 2--8(15) cm, triangular or generally 5-sided, with white or yellow wax-like exudate ("farina") abaxially, with exudate or not adaxially, main axis shallowly to deeply grooved adaxially; proximal-most pinnae more strongly developed on basal side; veins free. Sporangia: along veins +- throughout abaxial leaf surface; segment margins unmodified, recurved or not.
Species In Genus: 6 species: western North America. Etymology: (Greek: 5 lines, for leaf blades) Note: Isolated within cheilanthoid ferns; most closely related to remainder of "hemionitid" clade (otherwise represented in California by Aspidotis; see Schuettpelz et al. 2007 Mol Phylo Evol 44:1172--1185; Windham et al. 2009 Amer Fern J 99:68--72). Comprises a puzzling complex of chemical, chromosomal, and morphological variants (see Yatskievych et al. 1990 Amer Fern J 80:9--17), recently recognized to include six distinct diploid lineages (treated here as species) and unnamed auto- and allo-polyploids (each diploid species except P. pallida implicated in formation of at least one allopolyploid; Schuettpelz et al. 2015 Syst Bot 40:629--644). In most plants a wax-like exudate densely covers leaves abaxially; "green-backed" plants with sparse abaxial leaf exudate tend to be sterile hybrids with malformed spores (Smith et al. 1971 Amer J Bot 58:292--299). Species descriptions and key adapted from Schuettpelz et al. (2015 Syst Bot 40:629--644).
eFlora Treatment Author: Carl J. Rothfels, Ruth E.B. Kirkpatrick, Alan R. Smith, Thomas Lemieux & Edward Alverson