Vaginularia acrocarpa

Pteridaceae

Vaginularia acrocarpa Holttum

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

Grass Fern

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.

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

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

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 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).