Abrodictyum caudatum
species of plant
Abrodictyum caudatum is an epiphytic fern, found in rainforests in eastern Australia.
Taxonomy
The species was first described as Trichomanes caudatum by William Brackenridge in 1854, based on material collected in Tahiti by the United States Exploring Expedition. Filmy ferns (family Hymenophyllaceae) were historically divided into two genera, Trichomanes and Hymenophyllum by most pteridologists, based largely on the morphology of their indusia. After reviewing the Old World species of filmy ferns, Edwin Copeland came to believe that this arrangement was arbitrary, with a continuum of variation between indusial shapes, and lumped together disparate elements in each genus. Accordingly, he published a revised treatment of the family in 1938, splitting it into no less than thirty-three genera. One of these was the former Trichomanes subgenus Macroglena; he assigned T. caudatum there as Macroglena caudata.
While Copeland's system was adopted by some botanists, others considered his genera to be unduly narrow. Kunio Iwatsuki's system of 1984 consolidated several of Copeland's genera, including Macroglena, into Cephalomanes. Peter Bostock transferred T. caudatum to that genus as Cephalomanes caudatum in the Flora of Australia treatment in 1998. The advent of molecular techniques allowed Atsushi Ebihara and coworkers to redefine filmy fern genera based on molecular phylogeny.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Abrodictyum caudatum” as species of plant. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of plant. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2821933. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1854, 1938, 1984 and 1998.
Scientific names, classifications and consensus can change while older terminology persists in catalogues and historical literature. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. 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 “Abrodictyum caudatum” 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.