family
Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...
Gleicheniaceae, which includes six genera and about 160 known species. The formerly independent families Dicranopteridaceae and Stromatopteridaceae are generally included in the Gleicheniaceae, whereas the Dipteridaceae and Matoniaceae, although closely related, are considered separate families by most authors.Smith ''et al.'' (2006)
Description
These
tropical
The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the equator, where the sun may shine directly overhead. This contrasts with the temperate or polar regions of Earth, where the Sun can never be directly overhead. This is because of Earth's ax ...
ferns are the most widespread living lineage of
Gleicheniales
Gleicheniales is an order of ferns in the subclass Polypodiidae (the leptosporangiate ferns). The Gleicheniales has spore records potentially as early as the Early Carboniferous, but the oldest unambiguous macrofossil records date to the Early ...
. Their
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 ...
taxa
In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; : taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular name and ...
veins
Veins () are blood vessels in the circulatory system of humans and most other animals that carry blood towards the heart. Most veins carry deoxygenated blood from the tissues back to the heart; exceptions are those of the pulmonary and fetal c ...
. ''Stromatopteris'' also differs from the other species in having an achlorophyllous and subterranean
gametophyte
A gametophyte () is one of the two alternating multicellular phases in the life cycles of plants and algae. It is a haploid multicellular organism that develops from a haploid spore that has one set of chromosomes. The gametophyte is the se ...
abaxial
{{Short pages monitor There are seven extant
genera
Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family as used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial s ...
recognized
Phylogeny of Gleicheniaceae by Nitta et al. 2022 and Fern Tree of life