中国粉背蕨属的研究

A study of the genus Aleuritopteris Fée in China

 As a genus, Aleuritopteris was first founded by Fée upon Pteris farinosa Forsk.in 1852.  The genus had been ever since, however, practically forgotten, because it didnot receive a general recognition among the fern students, who considered it either asCheilanthes (Baker. 1897, Diels, 1900, C. Christensen 1905), or placed it in Pellaea(Hooker. 1858, Hope et Wright 1903).  Ching  (1941)  first reinstated the status ofAleuritopteris and later followed by Copeland  (1947), Panigrahi  (1961,  1962.) andPichi-Sermolli (1975).  In recent years, however, some pteridologists (Nayar, 1962, K.Iwatsuki and others) are still against it as a distinct genus.     Our recent study of the rich material on hand has shown Aleuritopteris to be adistinct genus, according to both the morphological characteristics and geographical dist-ribution.  We further propose the possibly evolutionary relationships of Aleuritopteriswith other related genera of the Cheilanthoid ferns, as indicated by the above scheme.     The genus is now represcented by a little more than 30 species, of which 25 areknown in China, among which 8 species and 3 varieties are diescribed for the first time.