Hairy Flowering Fern

Anemia hirsuta (I..) Sw. Syn. Fil. 156. 1806
Ostnunda hirsuta I/. Sp. PI. 1064. 1753.
Rhizome horizontal, short-creeping; fronds several, clustered, the stipe of the fertile fronds usually surpassing the sterile fronds. Fertile fronds (including the elongate fertile pinnae), 15-43 cm. long; stipe 5-27 cm. long, usually slender, stramineous or sometimes castaneous or darker (especially at the base), hirsute, glabrescent ; sterile lamina oblonglanceolate to ovate-oblong, or sometimes deltoid-ovate, 3-15 cm. long, 2-6 cm. broad, gradually narrowed toward the apex, pinnate; pinnae 6-14 pairs, remote or contiguous, spreading, acutish, the lower and rriiddle ones truncate at the base above, cuneate and often widely excised below, subsessile, oblong to ovate-oblong, deeply and obliquely cleft into several subequal distant linear or narrowly cuneate segments, these irregularly toothed, the basal one sometimes broader ; upper pinnae cuneate both above and below, narrow, scarcely incised, the uppermost confluent, forming a narrow cuneate terminal segment; leaf-tissue firmly herbaceous, lustrous above, paler below, pilose above, more laxly so and sparingly glandular below, striate in drying, the veins conspicuously elevated above; fertile pinnae 7-23 cm. long, the stalk usually far surpassing the sterile lamina, the panicle usually close ; spores cristate-striate, the ridges minutely echinulate or scabrous. Sterile fronds 7-25 cm. long ; stipe 2-14 cm. long ; lamina similar to that of the fertile frond or often relatively narrower, sometimes a little larger. Type locality : Jamaica.
Distribution : Jamaica, Santo Domingo, and Porto Rico, and on the continent from Mexico and Central America southward to Brazil.