2024 Edition • Get the App • Cite this Page
X

Colors

Data mode

Account

Login
Sign up

Collapse this

Support the Flora of the Southeastern US

2024 has been a banner year for making the best flora we can imagine. We've created:
With financial support from people like you, we are aiming even higher in 2025. Together we can accomplish all this: Vote on our 2025 priorities
  • Add Global Conservation Ranks (GRanks) vote
  • Professional graphic keys (polyclaves) to individual families/genera vote
  • 2 new FloraQuest apps: Florida & Mid-South vote
  • Image overlays highlighting diagnostic characters with arrows vote
  • iNaturalist integration in FloraQuest vote
Write-in vote: vote
We've set a goal of recruiting 200 ongoing supporters to donate $15 or more each month in 2025. Please help us reach this goal and make next year's flora even better:
Donate $15 per month
(0.9¢/key)
Donate $30 per month
(1.8¢/key)
Donate $50 per month
(amazing!)
Donate another
or one-time amount

Click the number at the start of a key lead to highlight both that lead and its corresponding lead. Click again to show only the two highlighted leads. Click a third time to return to the full key with the selected leads still highlighted.

Key to Pteris

Copy permalink to share

1 Leaf blades 10-20 dm long and wide; leaf veins anastamosing except near the margins of the ultimate segments; [subgenus Campteria; section Tripedipteris]
1 Leaf blades < 6 dm long or wide; leaf veins entirely free.
  2 Pinnae strictly simple, without lobes or pinnules; outline of leaf blade lanceolate, typically > 3× as long as wide; [subgenus Pteris; section Pteris]
    3 Petioles sparsely scaly, especially upwards; petiole scales dark brown to black; pinnae articulate to the rachis, mostly at right angles to it; fertile pinnae (at least) strongly revolute, with little or none of the lower surface exposed
    3 Petioles densely scaly, the scales usually continuing upwards onto the rachis; pinnae not articulate to the rachis, mostly ascending (at an acute angle to the rachis); fertile pinnae with a planar margin, most of the lower surface exposed
  2 Pinnae (at least the basal ones) with at least 1-several lobes or pinnules (many lobes or pinnules in P. plumula); outline of leaf blade ovate to orbicular, typically nearly as wide as long (or to 4× as long as wide in P. plumula); [subgenus Campteria; section Creticae].
      4 Pinnae of mature leaves decurrent in the upper half of the leaf onto the rachis; [subgenus Campteria; section Creticae]
      4 Pinnae of mature leaves not decurrent or only the terminal pinnae decurrent.
        5 Mature leaves regularly 1-pinnate-pinnatifid to 2-pinnate; [subgenus Campteria; section Campteria]
        5 Mature leaves pedately lobed; [subgenus Campteria; section Creticae].
          6 Pinnae with broad white central stripe
          6 Pinnae solid green