Species

Dryopteris affinis

Etymology

affinis: neighbouring, allied to, akin to

Authority

Dryopteris affinis Newm.

Family

Dryopteridaceae

Flora Category

Vascular - Exotic

NVS Species Code

DRYAFF

The National Vegetation Survey (NVS) Databank is a physical archive and electronic databank containing records of over 94,000 vegetation survey plots - including data from over 19,000 permanent plots. NVS maintains a standard set of species code abbreviations that correspond to standard scientific plant names from the Ngä Tipu o Aotearoa - New Zealand Plants database.

Structural Class

Ferns

Habitat

Widespread weedy fern of mostly easterly parts of New Zealand. Often in urban areas where it grows along streams or in wasteland. Also colonised plantation forestry, gullies and coastal forest.

Features

Deciduous, terrestrial ferns. Rhizomes stout, erect, often covered in dead stipe bases. Stipes 100–400 mm long, pale brown. Stipes and rachises densely covered in orange-brown scales. Laminae elliptic or narrowly elliptic, 2-pinnate, 0.3–1.25 × 0.15–0.3 m, glossy yellowish green to dark green. Primary pinnae in 25–50 (or more) pairs, narrowly triangular or ± oblong, tapering at apices, sessile, 80–150 × 20–30 mm, with a darkish patch near junction with rachis when fresh. Secondary pinnae in 15-30 pairs, oblong, adnate or decurrent on pinna midrib, obliquely truncate at apices, ± entire or sparingly toothed only at apices, to 15 × 7 mm; secondary pinnae on the basal pair of primary pinnae ± equal in length either side of midrib. Sori round, 1-5 pairs on each secondary pinna, often confined to upper pinnae, covered by reniform indusia which are rolled under sporangia when young.

Flowering

Not Applicable - Spore Producing

Flower Colours

No Flowers

Fruiting

Not Applicable - Spore Producing

Year Naturalised

1980

Origin

Europe, Asia

Fact Sheet Prepared for NZPCN by: P.J. de Lange (10 November 2012). Description adapted from Brownsey in Webb et al. (1988).

This page last updated on 10 Nov 2012