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.
Myriopteris rufa
Myriopteris rufa, commonly known as Eaton's lip fern, is a small to medium-sized fern of Mexico and the southwestern United States, with outlying populations in Costa Rica and the Appalachian Mountains. The leaf is about three times divided into oblong or round bead-like segments, which are covered in a thick mat of reddish-brown hair below and are variably hairy above. Broad scales on the leaf axis distinguish it from woolly lip fern (M. tomentosa). One of the cheilanthoid lip ferns, it was usually classified in the genus Cheilanthes, as Cheilanthes eatonii, until 2013, when the genus Myriopteris was again recognized as separate from Cheilanthes. It typically grows in rocky habitats, most frequently on limestone but also sometimes on basalt or shale. The common name honors Daniel Cady Eaton, who helped distinguish it from other lip ferns.
This fern is easily cultivated, and should be grown under high light in well-drained garden soil supplemented with sand. The soil should be dry to moist-dry.
Myriopteris rufa occurs in the southwestern United States from Arkansas (historically) and Texas and Oklahoma west to Arizona and Utah, and south through northern and eastern Mexico to Vera Cruz. Disjunct populations occur in the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia and West Virginia, and in Costa Rica, where one specimen (Gómez 683, CR) was collected in Cartago Province, in the Cordillera de Talamanca.
Lip Fern · Texas Lipfern · Alabama Lipfern · Myriopteris allosuroides · Golden Lipfern · Myriopteris chipinquensis · Myriopteris cinnamomea · Cleveland's Lipfern · Cooper's Lip Fern · Myriopteris covillei · Myriopteris cucullans · Fendler's Lip Fern
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Myriopteris rufa by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
