肉刺鳞毛蕨亚属 rou ci lin mao jue ya shu

Authors: Wang Faguo, Prof. Fuwu Xing, Sugong Wu, Xiang Jianying, Li-Bing Zhang & David S. Barrington

Plants generally large. Fronds brown after drying, with non-glandular hairs; indusia orbicular or reniform, inferior or superior.

About 27 species: distributed mainly in tropical and subtropical areas of Africa, Asia, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, and Pacific islands (including Hawaiian Islands); 22 species (11 endemic) in four sections in China.

Dryopteris subg. Nothoperanema can be divided into four sections. All four sections are strongly supported as monophyletic based on molecular and morphological evidence (Li Bing Zhang et al., BMC Evol. Biol. 12: 180. 2012). In fact, the four sections are strikingly different in morphology and are often treated as different genera.

Three of us (Wang, Xing, and Wu), however, prefer to keep the three sections, Dryopteris sect. Acrophorus, D. sect. Diacalpe, and D. sect. Peranema, as genera in the family Peranemataceae.