MARATTIACEAE

the giant fern family, the only family of the fern order Marattiales, or, in some classification systems, one of four families in that order. The family contains as many as six genera and about 200 species of large tropical and subtropical ferns with stout, erect stems. The leaves (fronds) may be very large in some species, such as Angiopteris evecta, which may have a stem 60 to 180 cm (2 to 6 feet) in height and leaves 4.5 m (15 feet) or more in length. Genera are distinguished mainly by the disposition of the spore-producing structures (sporangia), which lie on the lower side of the leaves. Angiopteris and Archangiopteris, with 100 and 10 species, respectively, have separate sporangia. Marattia (60 species) has the sporangia united in clusters called synangia, which are paired along each side of certain leaf veins and open toward the leaflet axis in this genus. Danaea (30 species) has single synangia, sometimes extending from the midrib of the leaflet to the margin and open at the terminal end. The genus Christensenia (one species) is sometimes included in this group. The genus of extinct ferns Psaronius, from Carboniferous and Permian times (360 to 245 million years ago), is considered to be either a member of the Marattiaceae or very closely related to it.