Present or Absent? About a Threatened Fern, Asplenium adulterinum 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 (Țesna Valley, Vânturătoarea Waterfall and Șugăului Gorges).