水蕨亚科 shui jue ya ke

Authors: Youxing Lin, Shiyong Dong, Michele Funston & Shigeo Masuyama

Plants terrestrial or aquatic. Rhizome creeping or erect, dictyostelic, sometimes with additional vascular bundles, sometimes with thick roots, apex scaly; scales brownish hyaline to black. Fronds dimorphic; stipe green, semicylindrical, glabrous or sparsely scaly; lamina simple or pinnate, thinly herbaceous, thickly papery to thickly leathery, or fleshy. Veins anastomosing, without included free veinlets. Fertile fronds normally taller, with smaller pinnae. Sori borne at vein tips, covered by a false indusium, or sporangia acrostichoid and scattered on whole of abaxial surface; paraphyses present, capitate. Spores trilete, tetrahedral-globose, with fine, parallel ridgelike ornamentations or perispore papillate to tuberculate, without an equatorial flange. x = 13(39), 30.

Two genera and ca. ten species: tropics and subtropics; two genera and four species in China.

Lower Taxa

• Acrostichum Linnaeus
• Ceratopteris Brongniart