''Myriopteris parryi'', formerly known as ''Cheilanthes parryi'', is a species of lip fern known by the common name Parry's lip fern.

Description

''Myriopteris parryi'' is a small tufted fern growing from a short creeping

rhizome In botany and dendrology, a rhizome ( ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and Shoot (botany), shoots from its Node (botany), nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from ...

with medium brown scales, most with a darker thread-like mid-stripe. The leaf is usually 6-15 cm long (rarely up to 25 cm) and 1-3 cm wide. The leaf blades are oblong-lanceolate, twice pinnate, and densely wooly. The stipe (leaf stalk) is no more than 1 mm wide and has hairs that range in length, are bent, and are variably appressed to the stipe. Leaf segments are small, nearly round, and flat, with tangled hairs about 4 mm long densely on both surfaces. The adaxial (upper) leaf hairs are silver to white and the abaxial (lower) leaf hairs are tan to brown or golden. The pale hairs on top of the leaflets are often thick enough to make the plant look quite woolly from above. On the underside of the leaf the dark colored

sporangia A sporangium (from Late Latin, ; : sporangia) is an enclosure in which spores are formed. It can be composed of a unicellular organism, single cell or can be multicellular organism, multicellular. Virtually all plants, fungus, fungi, and many ot ...

may be buried beneath the coating of hairs. Like many ''Myriopteris'' ferns, when conditions are dry the fronds may curl up with their abaxial surface exposed.Felger, R.S., S. Rutman, J. Malusa, and T.R. Van Devender. 2013. Ajo Peak to Tinajas Altas: A flora of southwestern Arizona: Part 3: Ferns, lycopods, and gymnosperms. Phytoneuron 2013-37: 1–46., url=https://cals.arizona.edu/herbarium/sites/cals.arizona.edu.herbarium/files/pdf/03PhytoN.pdf

Range and Habitat

This fern is native to the

Southwestern United States The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural list of regions of the United States, region of the United States that includes Arizona and New Mexico, along with adjacen ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

, and

Baja California Baja California, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California, is a state in Mexico. It is the northwesternmost of the 32 federal entities of Mexico. Before becoming a state in 1952, the area was known as the North Territory of B ...

, where it grows in rocky crevices in the mountains and deserts.

Taxonomy

The species was first described as ''Notholaena parryi'' by D. C. Eaton in 1875, from material collected near

St. George, Utah St. George or Saint George is a city in and the county seat of Washington County, Utah, United States. Located in southwestern Utah on the Arizona border, it is the principal city of the St. George metropolitan statistical area (MSA). The cit ...

. The epithet presumable honors

Charles Christopher Parry image:Charles Christopher Parry.jpg, Parry circa 1875 Charles Christopher Parry (August 28, 1823 – February 20, 1890) was a British-American botanist and Mountaineering, mountaineer. Biography Parry was born in Gloucestershire, England, but mo ...

, who collected it.

Karel Domin Karel Domin (4 May 1882 – 10 June 1953) was a Czech botanist and politician. Biography Domin was 4 May 1882, Kutná Hora, Kingdom of Bohemia, Austria-Hungary. After gymnasium school studies in Příbram, he studied botany at the Charles Uni ...

, who treated ''Notholaena'' as a subgenus of ''Cheilanthes'', transferred the species to ''Cheilanthes'' as ''C. parryi'' in 1915. The development of molecular phylogenetic methods showed that the traditional circumscription of ''Cheilanthes'' is polyphyletic.

Convergent evolution Convergent evolution is the independent evolution of similar features in species of different periods or epochs in time. Convergent evolution creates analogous structures that have similar form or function but were not present in the last comm ...

in arid environments is thought to be responsible for widespread homoplasy in the morphological characters traditionally used to classify it and the segregate genera that have sometimes been recognized. On the basis of molecular evidence, Amanda Grusz and Michael D. Windham revived the genus ''

Myriopteris ''Myriopteris'', commonly known as the lip ferns, is a genus of cheilanthoid ferns. Like other cheilanthoids, they are ferns of dry habitats, reproducing both sexually and apogamously. Many species have leaves divided into a large number of small ...

'' in 2013 for a group of species formerly placed in ''Cheilanthes''. One of these was ''C. parryi'', which thus became ''Myriopteris parryi''. In 2018,

Maarten J. M. Christenhusz Dr Maarten Joost Maria Christenhusz (born 27 April 1976) is a Dutch botanist, natural historian and photographer. Career He was born in Enschede, the Netherlands, received his undergraduate and master's degrees from Utrecht University in Biol ...

transferred the species to ''

Hemionitis ''Hemionitis'' is a genus of ferns in the subfamily Cheilanthoideae of the family Pteridaceae. Its circumscription varies greatly in different systems of fern classification. In the Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group classification of 2016 (PPG I), it ...

'' as ''H. parryi'', as part of a program to consolidate the cheilanthoid ferns into that genus. Based on plastid DNA sequence analysis, ''Myriopteris parryi'' is part of the ''lanosa'' clade in the ''

'' genus, with '' Myriopteris rawsonii'' its closest analyzed relative.

References

Works cited

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External links

Jepson Manual eFlora (TJM2) treatment of Myriopteris parryi''''Cheilanthes parryi'' — UC Photo gallery
{{Taxonbar, from1=Q17196810, from2=Q5089654, from3=Q38242052 parryi Ferns of California Ferns of Mexico Flora of the California desert regions Flora of Baja California Flora of Nevada Flora of Utah Flora of the Great Basin Flora of the Sonoran Deserts Flora of Arizona Natural history of the Colorado Desert Natural history of the Mojave Desert Natural history of the Peninsular Ranges Ferns of the United States Plants described in 1875