Bolbitis taylorii

Dryopteridaceae

Bolbitis taylorii (F.M.Bailey) Ching

Link to Australian Plant Name Index for publication details and synonyms: https://id.biodiversity.org.au/name/apni/58008

Rhizome short-creeping; scales narrowly ovate with narrowly acute apices. Fronds erect, 30–70 cm long, dark bluish green, shiny. Stipe 12–30 cm long, scaly. Lamina 1-pinnate, with a pinnatifid apex; lower 4–6 pairs of pinnae of sterile fronds attached by the stalks only, the remainder broadly attached with the lower margin decurrent as a narrow wing. Pinnae 8–18 cm long, 2–3.5 cm wide; longest pinnae towards the base; margins shallowly to deeply lobed. Fertile fronds with smaller, narrower, paler pinnae and a longer stipe. Veins free or sparsely anastomosing, with 1 or 2 series of areoles on each side of a pinna midrib. 

Occurs in NE QLD between Mt Finnegan and the Seaview Range Wet Troipcs. Also in Papua New Guinea.

Terrestrial in high altitude rainforest, usually above 500 m where it is found on earth and rock banks near creeks.

Produces small plantlets adventitiously from the frond apex where it touches the ground.

Readily grown in a container of moisture retentive mix or in the ground in a tropical or subtropical fernery or shaded part of the garden. The proliferous frond tips enable a colony to spread in moist places.

Similar to Bolbitis quoyana from which it may be distinguished by its simpler complex venation pattern (1–2 series of areoles on either side of midrib, cf. several or more series in B. quoyana) add by its sessile decurrent pinna bases
(cf. petiolate pinna bases in B. quoyana).