Botanical Name - Filices

----- FILICES

----- Cryptogamic asexual plants, bisexual in the prothalli stage; caudex (stem) erect, creeping or climbing aborescent; annual, perennial or the rhizome living through the summer while the aerial portions die out; rots fibrous; leaves simple or compound, of varied shape, texture, colour, venation and surfaces. Reproductive organs (sori and sporangia) on normal fronds or on separate (fertile) fronds, different from the normal. Sporangia dorsal or marginal, 1-celled, encircled by a complete or incomplete, many-jointed, elastic ring, collected in clusters of a definite but varied from, covered by am endusium or not or in panicles or spikes, rarely scattered laxly. The sporangia have absolete ring or are exannulate or the annulate is merely the apex of the sporangia, where the annulus forms a longitudinally streated crown which bursts vertically, or the sporangia are sunk below the general level of the leaf, in a many-celled, fleshy or corky pit or receptacle of various forms, opening by pores or clefts on the upper surface. Spores very small, varied in shape.

----- Note : - Since ferns are ecological indicators their place in the forest flora is of ecological value hence some of the important common ferns of different ecological habitat are being described below, which had not been dealt with in the original work of Partridge.