English: Alabama lip fern.
Synonym:
Myriopteris alabamensis; Allosorus alabamensis; Cheilanthes microphylla; Hemionitis alabamensis; Pellaea alabamensis; Pteris alabamensis.
Clades:
Cheilanthoideae;
Pteridaceae.
Region: United States; Mexico.
Habitat: in shade, on limestone outcrops, cliffs, ledges, on the ground on shell mounds or among limestone rocks; prefers shady habitat; at altitudes from 100 to 2400 meters.
Use: ornamental; cultivated under medium-high light in alkaline garden soil and sand, dry to slightly moist
BotanyFern; moderately-sized.
Root: rhizome bears persistent scales; sclaes linear to narrowly lanceolate, distantly toothed, straight or slightly twisted, loosely appressed, uniformly brown or orange-brown; bear a brown central stripe at the base that fades to a pale orange-brown on the rest of the scale.
Leaves: with few hairs on upper and lower surfaces, or lacking entirely; bases are closely spaced along the rhizome, 1 to 2 mm to 7 mm in diameter; spring up in clusters; not unfolding as fiddleheads; 6 to 50 cm long, 1 to 7 cm wide; stipe is 3 to 23 cm long, black, with a covering of long, straight, matted whitish or yellowish hairs, upper surface is rounded; leaf blades lanceolate to linear-oblong, usually bipinnate to bipinnate-pinnatifid at the base; rachis rounded on the upper side and dark in color, with twisted hairs tightly pressed to it on the upper side, and scattered, spreading, straight hairs on the lower side, no scales are present; pinnae are not jointed at the base, and the dark pigmentation of the rachis enters the edge of the pinnae; pinnae at the base of the leaf are slightly smaller than the pinnae immediately above them, more or less symmetric about the costa; upper surfaces of the pinnae have a few soft hairs, or none at all; upper sides of the costae are green for most of their length and lack scales beneath; pinnules are elliptical to long-triangular, not bead-shaped; largest pinnules are 3 to 7 mm long, with sparse white hairs on upper and lower surfaces, or lack hairs entirely
Sori: protected by false indusia formed by the edge of the leaf curling back over the underside, somewhat differentiated in appearance and texture from the rest of the leaf tissue, 0.1 to 0.4 mm wide; generally continuous around the edges of the fertile pinnules.
Sporangium: with 32 spores.
Sporophytes: apogamous triploids.
Cromosome number: 3n = 87.