Chinese brake

Description

Pteris vittata, commonly known variously as the Chinese brake, Chinese ladder brake, or simply ladder brake, is a fern species in the Pteridoideae subfamily of the Pteridaceae. It is indigenous to Asia, southern Europe, tropical Africa and Australia. The type specimen was collected in China by Pehr Osbeck. Pteris vittata is native and widespread in the paleotropics: found from the east, to the south tropical, and southern Africa (in Angola; Kenya; Lesotho; Malawi; Mozambique; Namibia; Tanzania (including the Zanzibar Archipelago); Cape Province, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, and Transvaal in South Africa; Eswatini; Uganda; Zambia; and Zimbabwe); temperate and tropical Asia (in the provinces of Anhui, Gansu, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hubei, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Xizang, and Yunnan in China; the prefectures of Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, and the Ryukyu Islands of Japan; and Thailand); and Australia, in the states of New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, and Western Australia. Pteris vittata is often associated with limestone habitats. It may be seen growing on concrete structures and cracks, in buildings in the central business district and suburbs of Sydney, Australia. It is an introduced species in California, Texas, and the Southeastern United States. A remnant population exists in the Italian peninsula, in Sicily, Calabria and Campania. Although it grows readily in the wild, Pteris vittata is sometimes cultivated. It is grown in gardens for its attractive appearance, or used in pollution control schemes: it is known to be a hyperaccumulator plant of arsenic used in phytoremediation. Pteris (brake) is a genus of about 300 species of ferns in the subfamily Pteridoideae of the family Pteridaceae. They are native to tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Many of them have linear frond segments, and some have sub-palmate division. Like other members of the Pteridaceae, the frond margin is reflexed over the marginal sori. The outermost layer is the single layered epidermis without stomata. The cortex is differentiated into outer and inner cortical region. The vascular cylinder is an amphiphloic siphonostele. The term "brake", used for members of this genus, is a Middle English word for "fern" from southern England. Its derivation is unclear, and is generally thought to be related to "bracken", whereby the latter word has been assumed to be a plural, as with "children", and the former word a back-formation. However it may have a separate derivation.