| Cystopteris fragilis (L.) Bernh. | |||
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| Family | Athyriaceae — APG family: Cystopteridaceae | ||
| Synonyms | Filix fragilis Gilib., Polypodium fragile L. | ||
| Common name | fragile fern | ||
| Description | Up to 30 cm high; fronds tufted, at tip of a stout rhizome, stipes shorter than blade, glabrous or with a few scales at base. | ||
| Ecology | Rock crevices, talus slopes up to more than 2,000 meters—in Himalayas to over 5,400 meters. Described from Europe. | ||
| Taxonomy notes | An extremely variable fern, with respect to both the dissection of the leaves and the sculpture of the spores. Alaskan population has been regarded as consisting of C. fragilis, with veins directed to the teeth, and transgressions between this species and C. diaphana (Bory) Blasdell (Polypodium diaphanum Bory), a South and Central American plant, with veins directed to the emarginations. |
This is a digital representation of Eric Hultén’s ‘Flora of Alaska and Neighboring Territories: A Manual of the Vascular Plants’, which was published by Stanford University Press in 1968. The book was digitized by C. Webb (at UAMN) as part of the Flora of Alaska project, with funding by the US NSF (Grant 1759964 to Ickert-Bond & Webb), and with permission of Stanford University Press. Data and images © 1968 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. Univ. Usage licence: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0. NB: You may find OCR errors; please refer to the hard-copy if in doubt.