Author:
Qjure
Book:
Qjurious
Type:
Info
Chapter:
3-443.13.00
Athyriaceae
English: Ladyferns.
Clades: Athyriales; Polypodiidae; Pteridophyta; Plants.
Genera: Athyrium; Deparia; Diplazium; Anisocampium; Cornopteris; Pseudathyrium.
Region: cosmopolitan.
Habitat: pantropical, few temperate areas; understory below trees and shrubs.
Botany
Identification: few constant features.
Ferns: terrestrial or lithophytic, less commonly aquatic; medium-sized.
Roots: rhizome: short or long, creeping or erect, branched or not; scaly.
Stem: green; deeply grooved from above; scaly or glabrous; with two lunate vascular bundles; blades singular or in sets of two; entirely pinnate; oblong-lanceolate to deltate; herbaceous to papery; with linear basal sori, paired back-to-back on the same vein; indusium is linear and persistent.
Leaves: deciduous or evergreen; trophopodic; monomorphic or weakly dimorphic.
Sporangia: brownish; with stalks two or three cells wide in the middle, and contain brown monolete spores.
Taxonomy
In the Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group classification of 2016 Athyriaceae is placed in the suborder Aspleniineae, also named Eupolypods II clade. Christenhusz and Chase treated Athyriaceae as the subfamily Athyrioideae of a very broadly defined family Aspleniaceae.
In the past Athyriaceae included Cystopteris and Gymnocarpium, which are now in Dennstaedtiaceae. Athyriaceae has been subsumed in the family Woodsiaceae, but a Woodsiaceae defined in this way may be paraphyletic.
Plant theory
In the Plant theory Athyriaceae is placed in the Order Aspleniales, .