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

Sinopteridaceae

Small to medium-sized, terrestrial or rupestral ferns, rhizome short-creeping to ascending with clustered fronds, dictyostelic, less often long-creeping and solenostelic, bearing narrow, non-clathrate, basally attached scales. Fronds long-stipitate, the stipe and rachis slender, dark and polished, hairy, scaly, or naked, with a single U- or V-shaped vascular strand, the lamina pinnate to tripinnate-pinnatifid, or palmatifid or pinnate, sometimes with multicellular hairs, or scales, or naked, sometimes abaxially farinose, the veins free (except in the sori) and 1 - several-times forked, or anastomosing without included free veinlets; fronds uniform or dimorphic with the fertile fronds more contracted and elongate than the sterile. Sori submarginal, terminal on the enlarged ends of the veins, discrete, or spreading laterally and +/- confluent, sometimes occupying the whole margin of the leaflet, exindusiate but protected by the reflexed and +/- modified (scariose) margin of the leaflet, paraphyses present or absent, annulus longitudinal, interrupted; spores globose, trilete, smooth to granulose, spiny, verrucose or corrugated.

Distribution

A widespread, tropical and temperate family of c. 8 genera, considered to be 14 or more by some authors, encompassing over 200 species, many of which grow in dry environments. In Papuasia there are 4 (or 6) genera with c. 9 species.

Literature

Genera

Note

Some authors prefer to divide the genus Cheilanthes further:

In some treatments the family Sinopteridaceae is combined with Hemionitidaceae, Cryptogrammitaceae, Parkeriaceae into an enlarged Adiantaceae.

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Updated November 1999 by Jim Croft (jrc@anbg.gov.au)

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