Australian ferns & fern allies Australian National Botanic Gardens Australian National Herbarium

Belchnum L.

Erect, or rarely rosette, terrestrial ferns of small to moderate and large size. Rhizome stout, erect or ascending, sometimes subarborescent, sometimes creeping or scandent, bearing clustered fronds, radially symmetric, dictyostelic, densely covered with dark, glossy, often harsh, basally attached scales. Fronds mostly long-stipitate, the stipe with several vascular strands arranged in a ring, naked or with reduced auriculate pinnae, not articulate to the rhizome, the lamine +/- lanceolate, deeply pinnatifid or pinnate, rarely simply, sometimes bipinnatifid, the pinnae shortly stalked, sessile or broadly adnate, firm usually glabrous, sometimes finely harily, margins entire or serrulate, cartilaginnous; veins free (except in the sorus), forked, terminating in the cartilaginous marginal strand; the lamina of fertile fronds sometimes strongly contracted. Sporangis borne in a continuous elongate coenosorus on a continuous fertile vein or commisure adjacent and parallet to the costa, protected by a continuous introrse indusium attached to the marginal side of the commisure, the non-soriferous part of the lamina normal or reduced to a narrow band hardly extending beyond the indusium; paraphyses lacking, annulus longitudinal, interrupted, of 14 - 28 thickened cells. Spores monolete usually smooth, sometimes with a perispore, papillose to variously folded.

Subg. Blechnum: Sterile lamina in fertile pinnae not contracted, similar to sterile pinnae.

Subgen. Lomaria: Sterile lamina in fertile pinnae reduced to a narrow wing hardly extending beyond the indusium.

Species in Papuasia