Hypolepis glandulifera
Brownsey & Chinnock Downy Ground-fernRhizome thick, 4–8 mm diam., densely covered in soft red-brown hairs. Fronds distant, erect but sometimes with drooping tips, relatively soft, hairy, 0.6–3 m long. Stipe long, 3–10 mm diam., green-brown to straw-coloured, speckled, dull, mealy-brown and furry towards base. Lamina mostly 4-pinnate, broadly triangular, dark to olive-green when mature; hairs on both surfaces numerous, pale, fine, often curled, some with glandular tips, interspersed with shorter, less curled hairs with needle-shaped or glandular tips. Rachises orange-brown to straw-coloured; hairs on both surfaces like those on lamina, but also with coarser, crooked hairs having orange-brown cross-walls, leaving raised orange scars when shed. Pinnules oblong; bases decurrent; margins almost entire or broadly and bluntly toothed, larger pinnules deeply lobed with margins crenate to shallowly serrate; apices obtuse; veins several per lobe or small pinnule. Sori near margin, in 2 rows on pinnule, barely protected by small triangular tooth, without hairs.
GleP, VVP, VRiv, GipP, OtP, WaP, CVU, GGr, DunT, NIS, EGL, EGU, WPro, HSF, HNF, OtR, Strz, HFE, VAlp. Also Qld, NSW, Tas. (including Flinders Is. and King Is.). From southern India and Sri Lanka to Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia. Found in humid, shaded forest areas or sometimes on well drained mountain slopes south of the Great Dividing Range. Tall thickets can form in forest clearings.
Previously known in Australia as H. punctata, a less robust and less hairy Asian species. Hypolepis glandulifera differs from other Australian species of Hypolepis in having large, 4-pinnate fronds, mostly yellow-brown stipes and rachises, abundant fine glandular hairs on lamina and no soral hairs or well-developed covering flap. The stipes of young fronds also are noticeably sticky. See notes on possible hybridization under H. muelleri.
Entwisle, T.J. (1994). Ferns and allied plants (Psilophyta, Lycopodiophyta, Polypodiophyta). In: Walsh, N.G.; Entwisle, T.J., Flora of Victoria Vol. 2, Ferns and Allied Plants, Conifers and Monocotyledons, pp. 13–111. Inkata Press, Melbourne.
Spinning
