Eusporangiate fern

Eusporangiate fern
Botrychium lunaria
Botrychium lunaria
Scientific classificationEdit this classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Division: Polypodiophyta
Class: Polypodiopsida
Groups included
Excluded

Eusporangiate ferns are vascular spore plants, whose sporangia arise from several epidermal cells and not from a single cell as in leptosporangiate ferns. Typically these ferns have reduced root systems and sporangia that produce large amounts of spores (up to 7000 spores per sporangium in Christensenia).

There are four extant eusporangiate fern families, distributed among three classes. Each family is assigned to its own order.[1][2]

The following diagram shows a likely phylogenic placement of eusporangiate fern classes within the vascular plants.[3][4]

eusporangiate
ferns
  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Smith-2006 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Christenhusz-2011 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Wolf-2010 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Lehtonen-2011 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).