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Key A4: small ‘fern-like’ pteridophytes, epipetric or epiphytic, growing on rock, tree bark, or walls
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https://fsus.ncbg.unc.edu/main.php?pg=show-key.php&keyid=40695
1 Leaves pinnatifid or bipinnatifid, the pinnae not fully divided from one another (the rachis winged by leaf tissue most or all of its length). | |
4 Leaves of an herbaceous, subcoriaceous, or coriaceous texture, > 1 cell thick; sori otherwise; [various habitats, not strictly of moist sites]. | |
5 Leaf blades > 7 cm long, glabrescent or hairy with hairs < 1 mm long. | |
8 Leaves of an herbaceous, subcoriaceous, or coriaceous texture, > 1 cell thick; sori otherwise or sporangia not grouped in sori; [various habitats, not strictly of moist sites]. | |
10 Sporangia borne on the lower surface of green leaves; [collectively widespread] | |
11 Veins anastamosing (rejoining one another) to form a netlike pattern of areoles. | |
12 Costae rounded or flat on the upper side, with red, multicellular hairs; margins of segments entire or with rounded lobes | |
13 Sori on the undersurface of the leaf, marginal and more-or-less hidden beneath either the unmodified revolute leaf margin or under a modified, reflexed false indusium | |
7 Leaves bipinnate or more divided. | |
14 Leaf blade pentagonal, broadly triangular, or narrowly triangular in outline, ca. 1-2.5× as long as wide. | |
15 Leaf blade either ovate, pentagonal, or broadly triangular in outline, mostly 0.8-2× as long as wide. | |
17 Leaves monomorphic. | |
19 Leaf blade pentagonal in outline, the terminal pinna by far the largest; rhizome 5-8 mm in diameter; indusia present, thick, persistent, and reniform; [introduced species, rarely naturalized] | |
14 Leaf blade elongate, mostly lanceolate, generally > 4× as long as wide (except in Adiantum, with leaf blade often only 1.5-3× as long as wide, but not notably triangular or pentagonal in outline). | |
22 Veins ending short of the margin; indusium attached under the sorus, either cup-like (divided into 3-6 lanceolate to ovate lobes which surround the sorus from below) or of minute numerous septate hairs, which extend out from under the sorus on all sides; petioles often densely beset with scales, the petiole bases persistent |
Key A5: small ‘fern-like’ pteridophytes, terrestrial, growing in soil, not associated with rock outcrops
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1 Leaf blades appearing to be digitate (the segments arising at a single point); [FL peninsula] | |
2 Petiole not branched dichotomously, the outline of the blade either longer than broad or triangular and about as wide as long. | |
3 Leaves pinnatifid or bipinnatifid, most of the pinnae not fully divided from one another (the rachis winged by leaf tissue most or all of its length). | |
7 Leaves broadly triangular in outline, about as broad as long. | |
7 Leaves lanceolate in outline, definitely longer than broad; sporangia either borne on normal leaf blades, or on slightly dimorphic blades, or on the basalmost pinnae of the leaf, or on an erect stalk that arises at or above ground level from the petiole of the sterile leaf blade (joining the petiole of the sterile leaf above the rhizome). | |
11 Sori distinct. | |
12 Sori round; leaf blades monomorphic (or slightly dimorphic in Cystopteris); the larger leaf blades 5-15 cm wide; petiole with 2 vascular bundles, uniting upwards into 1 U-shaped or V-shaped bundle. | |