- Source: Myriopteris fendleri
Myriopteris fendleri, formerly known as Cheilanthes fendleri, is a species of fern in the Pteridaceae family (subfamily Cheilanthoideae) with the common name Fendler's lip fern. It is native to the southwest United States and northern Mexico.
Description
Myriopteris fendleri is a small fern growing from a wandering rhizome. The leaves are about 6 to 12 inches long and about 2 inches wide and are glabrous on the adaxial (top) surface. There are wide lance shaped brown (initially much paler) scales without cilia on the costae (pinna midribs). The blade is 3 to 4 pinnate at the base and leaflets are lobed and flat when first leafing out and later curl adaxially to cover sporangia and appear more bead like from the top view. The leaves are often held upright but may be parallel to the ground or at intermediate angles.
Range and habitat
Myriopteris fendleri is native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, and ranges as far north as Colorado. It prefers north facing slopes with some shade, but can be found among rocks elsewhere.
Taxonomy
Myriopteris fendleri was first described by Sir William Jackson Hooker in 1852, as Cheilanthes fendleri, based on material collected by Augustus Fendler in New Mexico in 1848. The epithet presumably honors Fendler. In 1872, Eugène Fournier, in his treatment of Mexican ferns, chose to recognize the genus Myriopteris as a segregate of Cheilanthes, and transferred C. fendleri there as Myriopteris fendleri.
By a strict application of the principle of priority, Oliver Atkins Farwell transferred the species to the genus Allosorus as Allosorus myriophyllus var. fendleri in 1931, that genus having been published before Cheilanthes. Farwell's name was rendered unnecessary when Cheilanthes was conserved over Allosorus in the Paris Code published in 1956.
The development of molecular phylogenetic methods showed that the traditional circumscription of Cheilanthes is polyphyletic. Convergent evolution in arid environments is thought to be responsible for widespread homoplasy in the morphological characters traditionally used to classify it and the segregate genera, such as Myriopteris, that have sometimes been recognized. On the basis of molecular evidence, Amanda Grusz and Michael D. Windham revived the genus Myriopteris in 2013 for a group of species formerly placed in Cheilanthes, including Myriopteris fendleri.
In 2018, Maarten J. M. Christenhusz transferred the species to Hemionitis as H. fendleri, as part of a program to consolidate the cheilanthoid ferns into that genus.
Based on plastid DNA sequence analysis, Myriopteris fendleri is very closely related to Myriopteris wootonii.
