Australian Tropical Ferns and Lycophytes - Online edition

Vaginularia acrocarpa


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Close up of frond showing sori. © G. Sankowsky
Close up of frond showing sori. © CSIRO
Habit. © CSIRO
Habit. © G. Sankowsky
Family

Pteridaceae

Botanical name

Vaginularia acrocarpa Holttum

Link to Australian Plant Name Index for publication details and synonyms: https://id.biodiversity.org.au/name/apni/116661

Common name

Grass Fern

Description

Rhizome creeping, branched, forming a mat, bearing numerous dark hairy roots. Frond lamina 1–6 cm long, 0.5–0.8 mm wide, narrowly linear to narrowly oblanceolate, erect or arcuate, widening gradually from the base, bright green, leathery, glabrous; apex subobtuse; venation obscure. Sorus 0.4–2 cm long, subapical, the 2 indusium-like flaps separating as the sporangia mature; paraphyses numerous.

Distribution

Found in montane areas of the Wet Tropics between Windsor Tableland and Rockingham Bay, NE QLD. Also widespread in Malesia and the Pacific Islands. 

Habit and habitat

Epiphytic or lithophytic in moss mats on boulders and low tree trunks in high-rainfall high-altitude forest.

Natural history

A small and easily overlooked species that looks like a small carpet of grass.

Domin recorded Monogramma dareicarpa (=Haplopteris dareicarpa) in Australia in 1913 but supporting material has not been located and it has not been recorded again. Although this species is considered extinct in Australia there is limited evidence that it ever occurred here and it is possible that Domin's record referred to the similar sympatric species Vaginularia acrocarpa (syn. Monogramma acrocarpa) which had not been described at the time of Domin's record.

Similar species

Similar to Haplopteris dareicarpa, which can be dinstiguished by its longer sori (4–10 mm cf. 0.4–2, in V. acrocarpa) with a single indusium like flap (cf. 2 flaps in V. acrocarpa).

Citation of Australian Tropical Ferns and Lycophytes

Field AR, Quinn CJ, Zich FA (2022) Australian Tropical Ferns and Lycophytes. apps.lucidcentral.org/fern/text/intro/index.htm (accessed online INSERT DATE).

Field AR, Quinn CJ, Zich FA (2022) ‘Platycerium superbum’, in Australian Tropical Ferns and Lycophytes. apps.lucidcentral.org/fern/text/entities/platycerium_superbum.htm (accessed online INSERT DATE).

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