Teratophyllum sect. Polyseriatae
Content
Distribution
Asia-Tropical: Maluku (Maluku present); New Guinea present; Philippines (Philippines present); Sulawesi (Sulawesi present), Australasia: Queensland (Queensland present), New Caledonia present, Tahiti present
Malesia: Celebes, Moluccas, Philippines, New Guinea; eastwards to Tahiti, southeastwards to Queensland and New Caledonia; 3 spp.
Taxonomy
As indicated in the synonymy, T. articulatum was first included in the genus Polybotrya Humb. & Bonpl. and transferred to the new genus Teratophyllum by Kuhn in 1869. John Smith established a new genus Arthrobotrya for it in 1875, but Christ and Diels retained it in Polybotrya sect. Teratophyllum, in which they did not include the species here placed in Teratophyllum sect. Teratophyllum. The second species of the section, T. wilkesianum, was described in Polybotrya by Brackenridge in 1854, the third, T. brightiae, by F. von Mueller in Acrostichum in 1870. Underwood places T. brightiae (as Stenochlaena hügelii) in Stenochlaena sect. Lomariopsis, remarking that T. articulatum belonged to a distinct genus Arthrobotrya. In his early work on Philippine ferns, Copeland transferred T. articulatum to the genus Lomagramma because of its similarity to L. polyphylla (with which it had been associated by Diels, who placed the simple pinnate Lomagramma species in Gymnopteris). In Genera Filicum (1947) Copeland revived the genus Arthrobotrya; but he avoided consideration of the species T. brightiae, which has always simple acrophylls. The only clearly definable character distinguishing the two sections of Teratophyllum, as here presented, is the polyseriate or biseriate arrangement of fronds on the upper surface of the rhizome, with accompanying difference of vascular structure; this does not appear to me to Warrant generic Separation of the two.