Marattia Explained

Marattia is a small genus of primitive, large, fleshy eusporangiate ferns. It is the type genus of the family Marattiaceae, order Marattiales and class Marattiopsida.^[1] Formerly considered to be a much larger genus, genetic analysis has shown that Marattia in the broad sense was paraphyletic, and subsequently the genera Ptisana and Eupodium were split off.^{[2] [3]} Except for one species in Hawaii, the genus is neotropical.

The plants are large and terrestrial, with more or less erect rhizomes and fronds being 2-5 times pinnate. Sporangia are fused into synangia, and spores are monolete.

Basal chromosome count is 2n=80. The type species is M. alata.

Species list

• Marattia alata Sw. – Jamaica and Cuba
• Marattia douglasii (C. Presl) Baker – pala, kapua ilio, or Hawaii potato fern; Hawaii
• Marattia excavata Underw. – Mexico to Panama
• Marattia interposita Christ – Guatemala to Panama
• Marattia laxa Kunze – Mexico to Panama
• Marattia weinmanniifolia Liebm. – southern Mexico to El Salvador

Phylogeny of Marattia^{[4] [5]}

Notes and References

1. 10.2307/25065646 . Smith . Alan R. . Kathleen M. Pryer . Eric Schuettpelz . Petra Korall . Harald Schneider . Paul G. Wolf . 2006 . A classification for extant ferns . Taxon . 55 . 3 . 705–731 . 25065646 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20080226232147/http://www.pryerlab.net/publication/fichier749.pdf . 2008-02-26 .
2. 10.3732/ajb.2007308 . Murdock . Andrew G.. 2008 . Phylogeny of marattioid ferns (Marattiaceae) inferring a root in the absence of a closely related outgroup . American Journal of Botany . 95 . 5 . 626–641 . 21632388.
3. Murdock . Andrew G.. 2008 . A taxonomic revision of the eusporangiate fern family Marattiaceae, with description of a new genus Ptisana . Taxon . 57 . 3 . 737–755 . 10.1002/tax.573007.
4. Nitta . Joel H. . Schuettpelz . Eric . Ramírez-Barahona . Santiago . Iwasaki . Wataru . et al. . 2022 . An Open and Continuously Updated Fern Tree of Life . Frontiers in Plant Science . 13 . 909768. 10.3389/fpls.2022.909768 . 36092417. 9449725. free.
5. Web site: et al. . 2022 . Tree viewer: interactive visualization of FTOL . FTOL v1.3.0 . 12 December 2022.