New molecular and morphological evidences favor a combination of Blechnum bakeri C.Chr. in Cranfillia Gasper & V.A.O.Dittrich (Blechnaceae, Polypodiopsida), thus extending the distribution of Cranfillia to Madagascar and East Africa

Revision of Cranfillia opaca in New Caledonia

“…1 A-B), the atropurpureous rhizome scales, the finely papillose/denticulate leaf margin, the short, nigrescent and more or less entire indusium, and the first or first two (more rarely three) pairs of pinnae basiscopically free. This last character is also pointed out in the protologue of B. opacum, and has been illustrated in recent morphological reviews (Mettenius 1861;Bauret et al 2020). These characters, together with the dark green shade of the lamina in most cases, easily differentiate both taxa from the rest of the Blechnaceae that occur in New Caledonia.…”

“…Dittrich), a New Zealand species, from which it differs by the sterile lamina contour. This relationship is evident in current phylogenies (Perrie et al 2014;Gasper et al 2017;Bauret et al 2020) In 1874 Baker described the species Lomaria deplanchei Baker, also from New Caledonia, which would be combined by Christensen (1905) as Blechnum deplanchei (Baker) C.Chr. The presence of this taxon in collections seems scarcer than C. opaca.…”

“…Dittrich, and Blechnum s.s. Cranfillia is distributed throughout the Southern Hemisphere. Although species of Cranfillia are clearly supported as a clade by molecular data (Cranfill 2001;Gabriel y Galán et al 2013;Perrie et al 2014;Bauret 2017;Gasper et al 2017;Bauret et al 2020), in the studies carried out so far, there seems to be a large variation both at morphological and anatomical levels (Gabriel y Galán et al 2008;Passarelli et al 2010;Prada et al 2016;Moran et al 2018;Silva et al 2019;Bauret et al 2020).…”

“…As such, the family has undergone many nomenclatural changes, with new described genera, resurrected names, and new combinations (Gasper et al 2016). This new classification has been adopted by different authors (Bauret 2017;Dittrich et al 2017;Vicent et al 2017Vicent et al , 2018Moran et al 2018;Smith & Kessler 2018;Molino et al 2019;Silva et al 2019;Bauret et al 2020), and accepted by the global phylogeny of pteridophytes (PPG I 2016). However, there are detractors of this classification (Christenhusz & Chase 2018;Brownsey & Perrie 2019;Perrie et al 2021), some of them following another less-segregated classification proposal (Perrie et al 2014), or authors who have simply preferred to continue using the traditional nomenclature (Chambers & Wilson 2019), in which almost the entirety of the current subfamily Blechnoideae Gasper, V.A.O.…”

“…The genus Cranfillia Gasper & V.A.O. Dittrich currently includes 22 species, recognized by different authors (Gasper et al 2016;Chambers & Wilson 2019;Lange & Parris 2019;Bauret et al 2020), being the fourth largest genus in the family after Parablechnum C. Presl., Austroblechnum Gasper & V.A.O.…”