Salviniaceae

Azolla filiculoides, photographed by Karlheinz Knoch.

Belongs within: Leptosporangiatae.

The Salviniaceae are a family of small, free-floating aquatic ferns. There are two distinctive living genera, Azolla and Salvinia.

Characters (from Smith et al. 2006): Plants free-floating, roots present (Azolla) or lacking (Salvinia); stems protostelic, dichotomously branched; leaves sessile, alternate, small (ca. 1-25 mm long), round to oblong, entire; veins free (Azolla) or anastomosing (Salvinia); spores of two kinds (plants heterosporous), large megaspores and small microspores, these globose, trilete; spore germination endosporic; x = 9 (Salvinia), 22 (Azolla).

<==Salviniaceae
    |--Daharia Barale & Ouaja 2002 BO02
    |    `--*D. tunisiensis Barle & Ouaja 2002 BO02
    |--Salvinia WP05
    |    |--S. auricularia F04
    |    |--S. cucullata P88
    |    |--S. molesta Mitchell 1972 B06
    |    `--S. natans (Linnaeus) Allioni 1785 (see below for synonymy) B06
    `--Azolla [Azollaceae] WP05
         |--A. caroliniana M03
         |--A. filiculoides WP05 [incl. A. magellanica M03]
         |    |--A. f. var. filiculoides C49
         |    `--A. f. var. rubra [=A. rubra Br. 1810] C49
         |--A. imbricata (Roxburgh) Nakai 1925 [=Salvinia imbricata Roxburgh ex Griffith 1844] B06
         |--A. pinnata KLG05
         `--A. prisca JD05

Salvinia natans (Linnaeus) Allioni 1785 [=Marsilea natans Linnaeus 1763; incl. S. verticillata Roxb. ex Griffith 1844] B06

*Type species of generic name indicated

REFERENCES

[BO02] Barale, G., & M. Ouaja. 2002. La biodiversité végétale des gisements d’âge Jurassique supérieur-Crétacé inférieur de Merbah El Asfer (Sud-Tunisien). Cretaceous Research 23: 707-737.

[B06] Biswas, A. 2006. Pteridophytes of Indian Botanic Garden, Howrah. Bulletin of the Botanical Survey of India 48 (1-4): 175-188.

[C49] Crookes, M. W. 1949. A revised and annotated list of New Zealand Filicinae. Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand 77 (2): 209-225.

[F04] Ferrar, P. 2004. Australian entomology: isolated, or in touch with the rest of the world? Australian Journal of Entomology 43 (3): 329-333.

[JD05] Junge, F. W., M. Dolezych, H. Walther, T. Böttger, A. Kühl, L. Kunzmann, P. Morgenstern, T. Steinberg & R. Stange. 2005. Ein Fenster in Landschaft und Vegetation vor 37 Millionen Jahren: Lithologische, sedimentgeochemische und paläobotanische Befunde aus einem Paläoflusssystem des Weißelsterbeckens. Mauritiana 19 (2): 185-273.

[KLG05] Kumar, S., J. Lal & P. Gupta. 2005. Ricciocarpos Corda (Hepaticae) from Maldah district, West Bengal: a new generic record for Gangetic Plain. Bulletin of the Botanical Survey of India 47 (1-4): 131-132.

[M03] Macloskie, G. 1903. Pteridophyta, ferns and fernlike plants. In Reports of the Princeton University Expeditions to Patagonia, 1896-1899, vol. 8 – Botany (W. B. Scott, ed.) pp. 127-138. The University: Princeton (New Jersey).

[P03] Polunin, I. 1988. Plants and Flowers of Malaysia. Times Editions: Singapore.

Smith, A. R., K. M. Pryer, E. Schuettpelz, P. Korall, H. Schneider & P. G. Wolf. 2006. A classification for extant ferns. Taxon 55 (3): 705-731.

[WP05] Wikström, N., & K. M. Pryer. 2005. Incongruence between primary sequence data and the distribution of a mitochondrial atp1 group II intron among ferns and horsetails. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 36: 484-493.