Plant of the day is: Pellaea glabella or smooth cliffbrake
I'm looking at a spreadsheet of 76 species of ferns and thinking to myself "Whew! That's a lot of ferns!" Starting to dig into some of these in hopes of collecting spore and really learning the states ferns species better.
Taxonomy, etc.: I believe I've actually written about this species or P. atropurpurea slightly before the days of the blogger account when these were just Facebook ramblings. A long ago noticed plant that I keyed out was P. atropurpurea which I ran into at West Tyson park. Pellaea is a genus of about 60 accepted species that is in the Pteridaceae family. Pteris is actually the type genus for the family, not Pteridium which is actually in the Dennstaedtiaceae family. Not sure I'll ever be able to spell that without looking. Worth noting that Pteridium WAS described by Linnaeus initially as Pteris. But I digress, more than a bit. If you subscribe to the molecular phylogenetic approach towards classification (which I do), there are five subfamiles in Pteridaceae. Pellaea fall within the Cheilanthoideae which are described as primarily epipetric in semiarid habitats.
Description: Typically noted for it's sessile pinnae and very smooth (not hairy or scaly) stipes. The stipe is the stem underneath the blade which is called the rachis when the blade starts. Don't look at me, I didn't make these things up. Some of the Pellaea subspecies DO have hairlike scales near the midrib, if you ever want to get REALLY into your fern ID. I know you do. Pinnae are linnear to ovate-lanceolate for a botanical discription. Me, I think they look a little bit like Santoku knives. In the pictures here I love how you can see differences in pinnae sizes between the different subspecies. Cool stuff. Anyways, on the fertile segments of the pinnules (where you'll find the spores) the margins (edges) are recurved QUITE noticeably to kind of shelter and protect the spores. I'll have to look for that, here is a cool picture of it. Lastly, the stems are very dark brown to purple and the pinnules are actually wintergreen.
All in all this is a fairly easy fern to spot if you keep your eyes on the rocks. Fairly common, and the main difference between this and P. atropurpurea is the hairy stipe. Go out a hunting and take some good pictures!
Had to go EXTRA large on this image to really show it off. Taken but a couple miles from my front door. Pretty nifty really.
Habitat: Rocks. Just about everywhere in the United States and Canada excepting California and Oregon as well as the Southeast.
Culture: Epipetric? Found growing on rocks. Also described as epilithic or a lithophyte. It is found on more exposed sites than P. atropurpurea. Think of it as the Les Stroud to Bear Grylls in terms of ferns. Frequently found on limestone but I'm not sure its an absolute requirement. If you wanted this in a native home garden your best bet would likely being sowing spores with a little pinch of soil in rock features. In cultivation...well...that could be tricky. Tufa may be a decent option or extremely rocky limestone mixes. I'm not sure if the establishment phase of the prothallia can handle higher moisture/peat environments or not. I'll get into prothallia some other night.
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