Al Schneider's Rocky Mountains Plant Descriptions

Brittle Bladderfern
Cystopteris fragilis
Cliff Fern family (Woodsiaceae)

Brittle Bladderfern (Cystopteris fragilis) is found in many parts of the United States and is the most common fern at high elevations in the Colorado and nearby mountains. It tucks itself into rock crevices, often fading with summer dryness and reappearing with fall coolness and moisture. Grape-like clusters on the underside of the Cystopteris fragilis are the which contain which in turn contain , the reproductive cells of ferns. Cryptogramma acrostichoides is almost as abundant and frequently found very close to C. fragilis.

Linnaeus named this species Polypodium fragile in 1753 from specimens collected in northern Europe. Johann Bernhardi renamed it Cystopteris fragilis in 1806.


©2005 Steve Matson

Description

Delicate plants loosely tufted, from short, creeping . Leaves , from 1-15" long (including which is about as long as the leaf ), broadly , two to three times . brown below, yellow above, smooth. (small divisions of the leaf) are to .

Field Marks

Delicate, small fern with 2-3x . Tucked into rock crevices.

© Al Schneider

pinnae -- the primary segments of a compound leaf.

frond -- a large, divided leaf. The leaves of most ferns are fronds.

spores are produced by ferns, horsetails, and other primitive plants. Spores are like tiny seeds, but they lack food for the plant embryo. Because spores are easily carried aloft by the wind, they allow ferns and horsetails to reproduce asexually across considerable distances.

ovate -- Oval, egg-shaped, with a tapering point.

sori -- The dots on the back of fern fronds. These sori are groupings of many sporangia, each of which encloses numbeous spores, the reproductive bodies of ferns.

pinnate -- A compound leaf with two rows of leaflets.

lanceolate -- Lance-shaped. Long, wider in the middle.

sporangium is the enclosure in which spores are formed.

petiole -- the stalk of a leaf.

oblong -- Having an elongated form with somewhat parallel sides. Rectangular.

blade -- Just the flat part of a leaf. Not the stem.

glabrous -- smooth, glossy, having no bristles or hair-like structures. Bald.

leaflets -- Each little leaf-like thing in a compound leaf is a leaflet.

rhizome -- root-like stems that may either grow horizontally at the soil surface or in other orientations underground.