The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Asplenium ×gravesii
Asplenium × gravesii, commonly known as Graves' spleenwort, is a rare, sterile, hybrid fern, named for Edward Willis Graves (1882–1936). It is formed by the crossing of Bradley's spleenwort (A. bradleyi) with lobed spleenwort (A. pinnatifidum). It is only found where its parent species are both present; in practice, this proves to be a few scattered sites in the Appalachian Mountains, Shawnee Hills, and Ozarks, reaching perhaps its greatest local abundance around Natural Bridge State Resort Park. Like its parents, it prefers to grow in acid soil in the crevices of sandstone cliffs.
A. gravesii was produced by artificial hybridization in 1954–1955 by Thomas Darling Jr., who provided a detailed account of the process. Spores of the two parental species were sown on damp peat moss and kept largely in the shade, except for a few hours of morning sun. Gametophytes developed, and the young sporophytes that grew from them were large enough to remove in autumn. They were transplanted into a well-drained, gravelly loam. They were raised in a humid terrarium exposed to morning sunlight, with a layer of tissue to shade them from direct sunlight. Of the A. gravesii in the mixed population, one reached maturity in August 1955; two others did not mature until June 1956. Difficulties were encountered due to aphid infestation and various diseases promoted by excess moisture.
In principle, A. × gravesii might be found anywhere the ranges of the parent species overlap: throughout the mid- to southern Appalachian Mountains and extending west through the Shawnee Hills into the Ozarks. In practice, its occurrences are highly scattered and rare, as the two parental species do not often occur adjacent to one another. It has been found in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Hocking County, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Madison County, Missouri, Arkansas, Dade County, Georgia, and Alabama. An occurrence in West Virginia reported in 1926 and 1938 was subsequently found to be A. × trudellii, and one from Virginia in 1944 to be A. × kentuckiense. It has been noted as particularly abundant in the general vicinity of Natural Bridge State Resort Park.
Black spleenwort · Asplenium aequibasis · Egyptian spleenwort · Asplenium anceps · Bird’s Nest Fern · Asplenium appendiculatum · Asplenium arcanum · Fern · Asplenium attenuatum · Eared Spleenwort · Bird's Nest Fern · Azorean Spleenwort
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Asplenium × gravesii by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
