Pteris

Kessler, Michael, Smith, Alan R. & Prado, Jefferson, 2017, Prodromus of a fern flora for Bolivia. XXVII. Pteridaceae, Phytotaxa 332 (3), pp. 201-250 : 225

Pteris L., Sp. Pl. 2: 1073. 1753.

= Neurocallis Fée, Mém. Foug. 2(Hist. Acrostich.): 19. 1845.

Pteris is characterized by rhizomes short-creeping to erect, compact, bearing scales at apices, blades medium-sized to large, clumped, monomorphic, blades pinnate to several times pinnate, pentagonal to pedate, usually proximal pinna-pair elaborated basally, venation free or anastomosing without included free veinlets, sori on a marginal commissure connecting the vein ends, with paraphyses, indusia formed by the differentiated and recurved margins. Hybrids between species are probably frequent in Pteris but no hybrid has been seen for Bolivia. Pteris is a pantropical genus with perhaps 250 species, ca. 60 in tropical America. Arbeláez (1996) treated the 25 species of Pteris in Colombia, Smith (1995) those in the Venezuelan Guayana, Tryon & Stolze (1989) those in Peru, and Prado & Windisch (2000) dealt with the Brazilian species, half of these also in Bolivia; fern floras for Jamaica ( Proctor 1985), Puerto Rico ( Proctor 1989), the Lesser Antilles ( Proctor 1977), Mexico ( Mickel & Smith 2004), and Mesoamerica ( Moran 1995) treated Pteris from those areas. In Bolivia the genus comprises 22 native species; Pteris multifida Poir. , native to southeastern Asia, and widely naturalized around the world ( Riefner & Smith 2016) has been reported in cultivation (Beck 22900, LPB) or perhaps escaped in and around cities (Santa Cruz, Nee 49479, NY).

In the most recent phylogenetic analysis of the genus ( Zhang et al. 2015), Pteris s.l. (including several oftenrecognized satellite genera, e.g., Platyzoma ) is monophyletic, and sister to a clade comprising all other genera in the subfamily Pteroideae , including, in the Americas, Anogramma , Pityrogramma , Eriosorus , Jamesonia , Pterozonium , and Tryonia . All of these, except Anogramma and the last two genera, occur in Bolivia; several paleotropical genera also fall within the large, combined clade, including Onychium , Actiniopteris , Taenitis , and Syngramma . Within Pteris , three superclades have support, but only Zhang et al.’s “Superclade C” is species-rich in the Neotropics; this very large clade, and, in particular, “subgroup XIII” (the “ P. navarrensis clade”, contains most of the Bolivian species, including, in their sampling, P. altissima , P. deflexa , P. haenkeana , P. livida , P. muricata , and P. podophylla . Very likely, based on morphology, the following unsampled species also belong to the P. navarrensis clade: P. boliviensis , P. consanguinea , P. inermis , P. lellingeri , P. longipetiolata , and P. muricatopedata . Of Bolivian species, only Pteris pungens (their “subclade XIV”, predominantly paleotropical), P.tripartita (“subclade XI”, introduced in the Neotropics), P.denticulata , P. lechleri , and P. propinqua (“subclade X”, neotropical), P. quadriaurita (“subclade IX”, mostly paleotropical), and “subclade II” (only P. grandifolia , neotropical) are known to fall outside the P. navarrensis clade.