Dennstaedtia davallioides (R.Br.) T.Moore

New Zealand, North Island, Auckland, Auckland, Symond Street, University of Auckland Campus

27 Apr 2011

A single plant with fronds up to 1.2 m tall, and stipes black when mature. Collected growing wild amongst a weedy, poorly maintained Clivia planting between Student Union Buildings and Kate Edger Centre, University of Auckland. Associated with this plant is abundant naturalised Pteris tremula and Pteridium esculentum. I suspect this gathering originated from a sporeling that grew up in one of the Clivia plants prior to planting out, as the Clivia had been kept for years within the former Thomas Building Glasshouses and Associated Growth Rooms - when they were used by a PhD student for his research into that genus. In the same area was a massive Dennstaedtia that was said to have be collected from the Solomon Islands in the 1970s, that specimen had fertile fronds and occasionally threw sporelings which were usually (but not always) weeded out by the grounds man. Sometimes these sporelings appeared in the nearby plant compound - derived I suspect from spores floating up out of the Glasshouse ventilation system. This gathering was probably then overlooked when the Clivia were planted out. So far I have not found fertile fronds on the wild plant. So the determination is tentative, in that without fertile material all I could do was match this gathering with others of the genus held in AK, of those it is most similar to D. samoensis, which is known from the Solomon Islands. Images of this fern passed to New Zealand fern specialists failed to do any better than I have here.
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20 Aug 2020