danielmosquin's Favorites

This one stood out from a distance, with overall form strongly like P. lonchitis, but with noticeable toothed leaflets.

Very glossy and stiff leaflets, proportionally quite long.

The pressed specimen however strikes me quite differently. The glossiness is gone now, and without the tilt to the leaflets they look much more crowded and not as long & thin.

Not sure about the spores, but they look to have matured normally?

My original thought had been a hybrid of P. lonchitis x kruckebergii, but I'm less sure now.

If it isn't a hybrid, I would have called it P. lonchitis based on the general appearance in the field (perhaps this species can have occasional toothiness like munitum?), but based on the pressed specimen I would go with P. kruckebergii instead based on the crowdedness and rather deep divisions.

Growing on rock outcrop with several large clumps of P. kruckebergii (and lemmonii not far away), but lonchitis was also common throughout the area with scattered plants widely distributed.

Edit...
Repeat visit in 2023: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/183925296
And Peter Zika's record: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/182937780

This hybrid occurs here with both parents under an overhanging ledge of a glacial erratic. The erratic is ultramafic peridotite originating from ultramafic outcrops on nearby higher peaks. Both parents are present here in montane forest of Tsuga heterophylla and Abies amabilis, elevation about 1000 meters. The third and fourth photos provide a morphological comparison of the hybrid (in the middle) with both parents. Polystichum kruckebergii, which incorporates the genomes of P. lemmonii and P. lonchitis, is a bodenvag species in regard to ultramafic bedrock. It has apparently acquired its tolerance of ultramafics from its parent P. lemmonii, which is restricted to ultramafic bedrock. This hybrid thus combines the genomes of P. lemmonii, P. lonchitis, and P. munitum. For more details on the analysis of this hybrid see https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Douglas_Soltis/publication/279238216_Electrophoretic_and_Morphological_Confirmation_of_Interspecific_Hybridization_between_Polystichum_kruckebergii_and_P_munitum/links/559ab7cb08ae793d1382129f.pdf