Anemia mexicana
Anemia mexicana Klotzsch
(of Mexico, where the type specimen was collected)
Local names: Mexican fern, Mexican floweringfern
Plant terrestrial or on rocks, to ca. 50 cm tall; rhizomes short-creeping, horizontal, covered with coarse dark hairs; leaves 1-pinnate (except for fertile pinnae), partially dimorphic, with 4–6 pairs of sterile pinnae distally and with the lowermost pair of pinnae (fertile) highly modified and extremely different in appearance; fertile pinnae bipinnate, with only a minute amount of blade tissue, very long-stalked, to 30 cm long, usually exceeding the sterile portion of the leaf in length; sterile pinnae triangular-ovate to lanceolate, basally truncate, apically subobtuse to acute or acuminate, marginally serrulate, the lowermost sterile pinnae often lobulate; sporangia in 2 rows on ultimate segments (= smallest subdivisions) of fertile pinnae; indusial absent; 2n = 76 (Mickel & Smith 2004). Outcrops, under overhanging ledges, rocky partially shaded slopes, banks of ravines; found primarily on limestone outcrops on the Edwards Plateau e and n to Bexar (BAYLU, TEX-LL), Hays (TAES), Comal (S. Barber 416, BRIT), and Travis (M.S. Young s.n., “4/6/1918,” BRIT, TEX-LL) cos., also Austin Co. in se Blackland Prairie (Correll 1956) and Brewster Co. (P. Manning 3401, TEX-LL) in the Trans-Pecos; also Mexico; this is one of 19 pteridophyte species known in the U.S. only from TX (see page 40 and Table 5). Sporulating Feb–Oct. [Ornithopteris Mexicana (Klotzsch) Underw.] The fertile leaves, with 2 long-stalked, fertile, basal pinnae with almost no green tissue, make this species unmistakable.