Present or Absent? About a Threatened Fern, <i>Asplenium adulterinum</i> Milde, in South-Eastern Carpathians (Romania)

Abstract

Asplenium adulterinum Milde is one of the rarest and most threatened representatives of the Aspleniaceae family in the Carpathians. Botanical literature mentioned the ladder spleenwort in many localities in South-Eastern Carpathians in the past, but during the last decades the species has not been collected and deposited in public herbaria by any botanist. All existing herbarium material in Romanian herbaria (including Asplenium trichomanes and A. trichomanes-ramosum) was revised and all available information from botanical literature was critically compiled in order to clarify the distribution of Asplenium adulterinum in the South-Eastern Carpathians. After almost 80 years since the first mention of the species in the Carpathians, this paper reports the recent identification of Asplenium adulterinum in three new locations in South-Eastern Carpathians (Ţesna Valley, Vânturătoarea Waterfall and Şugăului Gorges).

RAPD analysis of Asplenium adulterinum Milde from in vitro culture

“…Despite its ecological role in biodiversity maintenance and the conservation interest underlined by its characteristics being a glacial relict (Holderegger 1994), a serpentine fern (Tutin et al 1980), and the most threatened plant species in the Romanian flora (Bartók and Irimia 2015), few studies regarding A. adulterinum ex situ conservation were done. In this context, a study concerning the distribution, population rate, and conservation plant framework for this species was published by Zo£nierz et al (2008), in Poland.…”