Myriopteris gracillima
species of plant
Myriopteris gracillima, commonly known as lace lip fern, is a small fern native to native to western North America, where it grows in the North American Cordillera from British Columbia south to central California and west to eastern Montana and Utah. Its leaves grow in clusters and are dissected into oblong segments, with dense hairlike scales on the underside and more or less absent on the upper side. One of the cheilanthoid lip ferns, it was usually classified in the genus Cheilanthes as Cheilanthes gracillima until 2013, when the genus Myriopteris was again recognized as separate from Cheilanthes. It grows in rocky habitats, usually over igneous rock.
Description
Leaf bases are closely spaced along the rhizome, which is 4 to 8 millimeters (0.2 to 0.3 in) in diameter. It is ascending and branches. It bears brown to light brown scales, sometimes uniformly colored or with a darker, poorly defined stripe in the center, which may sometimes be red-brown. They are linear-lanceolate in shape, straight or tightly twisted, entire (lacking teeth) at the edges, and only loosely appressed (pressed against the surface of the rhizome). The scales are not shed with age.
The fronds arise from the rhizome in clusters; they do not unfold as fiddleheads like typical ferns (noncircinate vernation).
“Myriopteris gracillima” enters the record as species of plant. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Myriopteris, gracillima and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Myriopteris gracillima” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Myriopteris, gracillima and species provides the most credible route into that argument.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17196416. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2013.
Current terminology should not be projected backward without checking the classification used when the underlying evidence was created. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Myriopteris gracillima” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.