Aleuritopteris anceps

Aleuritopteris anceps (Blanf.) Panigrahi, Bull. Bot. Surv. India 2(3–4): 321 1961. (syn: Aleuritopteris calicicola Ching; Aleuritopteris farinosa var. anceps (Blanf.) Ching; Aleuritopteris javanensis Saiki; Aleuritopteris pseudofarinosa Ching & S.K.Wu; Aleuritopteris pseudofarinosa var. glandulosa H.G.Zhou; Aleuritopteris rigidula Saiki; Aleuritopteris wuyishanensis Ching; Cheilanthes anceps Blanf.; Cheilanthes candida Zoll. (ambiguous synonym); Cheilanthes farinosa var. anceps (Blanf.) Blanf.; Cheilanthes pseudofarinosa (Ching & S.K.Wu) K.Iwats.; Hemionitis anceps (Blanf.) Christenh.);
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Tropical & Subtropical Asia: Assam, Bangladesh, China South-Central, China Southeast, East Himalaya, India, Jawa, Lesser Sunda Is., Malaya, Myanmar, Nepal, New Guinea, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet, West Himalaya as per POWO (Hemionitis anceps (Blanf.) Christenh.):
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China (Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hunan, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Yunnan, Zhejiang), Tibet, Nepal, India (Assam State, Chandigarh, ?Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Odisha, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, West Bengal), Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar [Burma], Thailand, Java, Jammu & Kashmir (Ladakh, Kashmir), Pakistan, Lesser Sunda Isl. (Bali, Lombok, Timor) as per Catalogue of Life;
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Aleuritopteris anceps ? bicolor ?: 6 images.
Date/Time-15 Jan 2022
Location- South-west Maharashtra, Western Ghat hills.
Habitat- Wild. In a waterfall.
Plant Habit- Lithophytic Herb. Single.
Height-30cm.
Leaves- Lamina is triangular. Brown scales, present on stipe and lower part of rachis. Rest of rachis is glabrous.

Aleuritopteris anceps – you can read in various places about the difference from bicolor.  E.g. A. anceps has broader scales that extend up to the top of the stipe, bicolor has very narrow ones confined ro the stipe-base (scales bicolorous in both)..  anceps has a triangular frond, bicolor has a pentagonal one (because the lowest pinnule is abruptly longer). anceps has a thick stipe, bicolor has a thin one etc. etc.

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Cheilanthes argentea SN21420 : 3 posts by 2 authors. Attachments (1) – 3 mb.
Cheilanthes argentea (S.G.Gmel) Kunze, Linnaea wild fern from Western Ghats Tamilnadu.

Oh dear – this really is completely misguided and totally mistaken!  Wrong genus, wrong species. I really think one must update and improve the identification and naming while posting specimens (often bad quality ones like this that show nothing to enable an identification), and revise these regressive old-style names that are completely out of touch with modern botany.
  First the genus – while in previous times all cheilanthoid ferns were simply called Cheilanthes, nearly everyone nowadays recognises the genus Aleuritopteris for these farinose ones – also supported molecularly. So may I suggest Aleuritopteris, instead of Cheilanthes?
   Secondly the species, A. argentea is a high-altitude to temperate species of China, Korea, Japan and Tibet (plus one locality at 3000 m in the dry inner Himalaya in Central Nepal and another locality in a similar region in Bhutan). It is not present in peninsular India, nor in the usual Indo-Himalayan region.
   There is a lot of accurate Botanical literature on Indian Aleuritopteris – but presumably the poster has not heard of any of it. For Aleuritopteris one needs to see the distribution of the scales on the back of the frond – stipe, rachis and costae – but this is not shown. It is also a terrible specimen – all scrumpled up as the collector did not bother to soak it out flat in a bucket of water before pressing. Totally inadequate!
    As I happen to have specilaised in the genus I can recognise that it is the common Aleuritopteris anceps, the usual one in South India, and not the other common South Indian one, A. bullosa. But what’s the use of a specimen so bad as this – or the use of posting it?
     Anyway, that’s it.

 

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