A fern is a member of a group of vascular plants that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers. They differ from mosses and other bryophytes by being vascular, i.e., having specialized tissues that conduct water and nutrients and in having life cycles in which the branched sporophyte is the dominant phase. Ferns have complex leaves called megaphylls, that are more complex than the microphylls of clubmosses. Most ferns are leptosporangiate ferns. They produce coiled fiddleheads that uncoil and expand into fronds. The group includes about 10,560 known extant species. Ferns are defined here in the broad sense, being all of the Polypodiopsida, comprising both the leptosporangiate (Polypodiidae) and eusporangiate ferns, the latter group including horsetails or scouring rushes, whisk ferns, marattioid ferns, and ophioglossoid ferns.
Oliver Wolf Sacks, was a British neurologist, naturalist, historian of science, and writer. Born in Britain, Sacks received his medical degree from The Queen's College, Oxford in 1960, before moving to the United States, where he spent most of his career. He then interned at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco and completed his residency in neurology and neuropathology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). After a fellowship at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, he served as neurologist at Beth Abraham Hospital's chronic-care facility in the Bronx, where he worked with a group of survivors of the 1920s sleeping sickness encephalitis lethargica, who had been unable to move on their own for decades. His treatment of those patients became the basis of his 1973 book Awakenings, which was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film in 1990, starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro.
Joel Asaph Allen was an American zoologist, mammalogist, and ornithologist. He became the first president of the American Ornithologists' Union, the first curator of birds and mammals at the American Museum of Natural History, and the first head of that museum's Department of Ornithology. He is remembered for Allen's rule, which states that the bodies of endotherms vary in shape with climate, having increased surface area in hot climates to lose heat, and minimized surface area in cold climates, to conserve heat.
Asplenium platyneuron, commonly known as ebony spleenwort or brownstem spleenwort, is a fern native to North America east of the Rocky Mountains. It takes its common name from its dark, reddish-brown, glossy stipe and rachis, which support a once-divided, pinnate leaf. The fertile fronds, which die off in the winter, are darker green and stand upright, while the sterile fronds are evergreen and lie flat on the ground. An auricle at the base of each pinna points towards the tip of the frond. The dimorphic fronds and alternate, rather than opposite, pinnae distinguish it from the similar black-stemmed spleenwort.
Matteuccia is a genus of ferns with one species: Matteuccia struthiopteris. The species epithet struthiopteris comes from Ancient Greek words στρουθίων (strouthíōn) "ostrich" and πτερίς (pterís) "fern".
Douglas Houghton Campbell was an American botanist and university professor. He was one of the 15 founding professors at Stanford University. His death was described as "the end of an era of a group of great plant morphologists."
The American Musicological Society is a musicological organization founded in 1934 to advance scholarly research in the various fields of music as a branch of learning and scholarship, a mission that has since evolved to include teaching and learning about music in addition to research. It grew out of a small contingent of the Music Teachers National Association and, more directly, the New York Musicological Society (1930–1934). Its founders were George S. Dickinson, Carl Engel, Gustave Reese, Helen Heffron Roberts, Joseph Schillinger, Charles Seeger, Harold Spivacke, Oliver Strunk, and Joseph Yasser. Its first president was Otto Kinkeldey, the first American to receive an appointment as professor of musicology. At present, approximately 3000 individual members from forty nations are a part of the Society.
A cryptogam is a plant or a plant-like organism that reproduces by spores, without flowers or seeds. The name Cryptogamae (from Ancient Greek κρυπτός means "hidden reproduction", referring to the fact that no seed is produced, thus cryptogams represent the non-seed bearing plants. Other names, such as "thallophytes", "lower plants", and "spore plants" are also occasionally used. As a group, Cryptogamae are the opposite of the Phanerogamae or Spermatophyta, the seed plants. The best-known groups of cryptogams are algae, lichens, mosses, and ferns, but it also includes non-photosynthetic organisms traditionally classified as plants, such as fungi, slime molds, and bacteria. The classification is now deprecated in Linnaean taxonomy.
Johann Müller was a Swiss botanist who was a specialist in lichens. He published under the name Johannes Müller Argoviensis to distinguish himself from other naturalists with similar names.
The Forests and Forest Flora of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, is a botanical reference book written and illustrated by Thomas Robertson Sim, and published in 1907 by Taylor & Henderson of Aberdeen. At the time he was the Conservator of Forests of Natal, and had been the District Forest Officer in King William's Town, bringing a wealth of experience to the creation of this monumental work. Sim had previously written a great many books such as "Handbook of Kaffrarian Ferns", "The Ferns of South Africa" and "Botanical Observations on the Forests of Eastern Pondoland". He was a Fellow of both the Linnaean Society and the Royal Horticultural Society, with sterling credentials for producing this extensive flora of the Cape.
Torrey Botanical Society was started in the 1860s by colleagues of John Torrey. It is the oldest botanical society in the Americas. The Society promotes the exploration and study of plant life, with particular focus on the flora of the regions surrounding New York City. Members of the group including Nathaniel Lord Britton and his wife Elizabeth Gertrude Britton founded the New York Botanical Garden.
The American Bryological and Lichenological Society is an organization devoted to the scientific study of all aspects of the biology of bryophytes and lichen-forming fungi and is one of the nation's oldest botanical organizations. It was originally known as the Sullivant Moss Society, named after William Starling Sullivant. The Society publishes a quarterly journal distributed worldwide, The Bryologist, which includes articles on all aspects of the biology of mosses, hornworts, liverworts and lichens. The Society also publishes the quarterly journal Evansia, which is intended for both amateurs and professionals in bryology and lichenology and is focused on North America.
Rolla Milton Tryon Jr. was an American botanist who specialized in the systematics and evolution of ferns and other spore-dispersed plants (pteridology). His particular focus and interest lay in two areas, historical biogeography of ferns and the taxonomy of tropical American ferns.
Elizabeth Gertrude Britton was an American botanist, bryologist, and educator. She and her husband, Nathaniel Lord Britton played a significant role in the fundraising and creation of the New York Botanical Garden. She was a co-founder of the predecessor to the American Bryological and Lichenological Society. She was an activist for protection of wildflowers, inspiring local chapter activities and the passage of legislation. Elizabeth Britton made major contributions to the literature of mosses, publishing 170 papers in that field.
Alvah Augustus Eaton was an American botanist who described many species of pteridophytes, orchids and grass.
Asplenium × ebenoides is a hybrid fern native to eastern North America, part of the "Appalachian Asplenium complex" of related hybrids. The sterile offspring of the walking fern (A. rhizophyllum) and the ebony spleenwort (A. platyneuron), A. × ebenoides is intermediate in morphology between its two parents, combining the long, narrow blade of A. rhizophyllum with a dark stem and lobes or pinnae similar to those of A. platyneuron. While A. × ebenoides is generally sterile, fertile specimens with double the number of chromosomes are known from Havana Glen, Alabama. These fertile allotetraploids were reclassified as a separate species named A. tutwilerae in 2007, retaining the name A. × ebenoides for the sterile diploids only.
Lowell Fitz Randolph was an American scientist, in the field of genetics, botany and horticulture. He was a Cornell University graduate who became Professor of Botany and was also employed as an associate cytologist for the United States Department of Agriculture. He was also an avid iris collector and wrote a book on the Iris genus. He carried out important research into plant chromosomes of iris, orchid genus and corn plants. He was sometimes known as "Fitz" by his many friends and associates.
Alice Faber Tryon (1920–2009) was an American botanist who specialized in the systematics of ferns and other spore-dispersed plants (pteridology). She had two general areas of interest in her work, first incorporating the use of spore surface patterns into the understanding of fern diversity and systematics, and second the fern family Pteridaceae.
Antrophyopsis is a genus of vittarioid ferns, a member of subfamily Vittarioideae and family Pteridaceae. Like other vittarioids, ferns in the genus are epiphytes with simple, straplike leaves. They are native to tropical Africa and islands of the Indian Ocean. The presence of a midrib in their leaves, the shape of their spores, and the shape of cells at the tip of their paraphyses help to distinguish members of the genus from other vittarioids. The group was raised to the level of genus in 2016.
The Fern Journal was a quarterly scientific journal specializing in pteridology.
