Blechnum fraseri (A.Cunn.) Luerss.

Rhizomes of two kinds: slender creeping rhizomes, 0.2-0.5 cm diam. and an erect caudex often 1 m tall and recorded up to 250 cm, usually 2-3 cm diam., rarely up to 6 cm (the base may become thicker due to numerous adventitious roots); the plant appears as a miniature tree fern supporting a radial crown of fronds arising from the base of the caudex just below or at soil level, the slender horizontal rhizomes give rise to colonies of new plants; the apices of both types of rhizomes are densely scaly, scales linear-acuminate, 1-1.2 by 0.1-0.2 cm, entire, dark reddish brown and shiny, mostly bicolorous with the cell walls of the central area dark and the margins a paler reddish brown, sometimes beneath and between these conspicuous scales a mass of softer finer, pale filamentous and more obtuse scales 3-5 cells wide at the base. Fronds 18-70 by 6-25 cm, semiglossy, living material dark green above, medium green underneath, similar or fertile fronds slightly narrower than sterile fronds. Stipes very short, (2-)5-20 cm, dark reddish brown at the base, becoming brown or stramineous above, densely scaly at the base, fewer persistent scales above, scales similar to those of the caudex, but smaller and sometimes irregularly toothed. Lamina ovate to narrowly elliptic, bipinnatisect to bipinnate, usually becoming bipinnatifid, with conspicuous triangular toothed wings adnate to and on either side of the rhachis alternating with the pinnae, the more apical segments of the lamina undivided, (11-)15-27 pairs of pinnae. Rhachis and costae reddish brown, brown or stramineous with sparse scales (fertile fronds more scaly), scales linear, narrowly elliptic or cordate, acuminate, entire or rarely toothed, red-brown, often with only a midrib of darkened cells and sometimes the whole scale pale buff concolorous and with thin-walled cells. Sterile pinnae narrowly elliptic, acuminate, pinnatifidly dissected and tapering or truncate at the rhachis, 3.5-15 by 0.8-3 cm, adnate with winged lobes of tissue on rhachis and well-developed triangular wings adnate to the rhachis between pinnae, pinnae thinly coriaceous, mid green to yellow green in living material, margins ranging from entire to crenate and dentate, basal pinnae either gradually reduced through one or two pairs of pinnae, or abruptly reduced to winged lobes extending down rhachis, the lowest one sometimes small and serrate rather than dissected, pinnae towards apex decreasingly pinnatifidly dissected and increasingly adnate, at frond apex, becoming less dissected and the margins increasingly dentate; lamina becoming pinnatifid and narrowing eventually to toothed adnate segments and with a minute terminal segment. Sterile pinnules oblong, acute, 0.5-2.3 by 0.2-0.5 cm, about 20 per pinna in the mid-region, adnate, contiguous, margins entire to serrate or dentate, often slightly thickened and finely revolute, veins simple or once furcate terminating in a linear gland more visible on the adaxial surface and not extending to the pinnule margin. Fertile pinnae and pinnules slightly contracted and markedly caudate but otherwise usually similar to those of the sterile fronds; pinnules and often also the rhachis lobes with fertile regions of orange brown sori occupying the whole of the undersurface. Spores pale in colour, 54.6 by 34 µm (from 5 herbarium specimens), perine verrucose to deeply verrucose, smooth to finely reticulate at base of verrucae, the verrucae microreticulate beneath a scabrous layer which varies in its persistence, exine smooth to granulose.