Tectariaceae

Tectariaceae is a family of leptosporangiate ferns in the order Polypodiales, suborder Aspleniineae. It comprises seven genera, of which Tectaria is by far the largest. An alternative classification treats the family as a subfamily of Polypodiaceae. In 1990, Karl U. Kramer and coauthors treated Pleocnemia and 7 of the currently recognized genera as a subfamily of Dryopteridaceae. Two other genera, Arthropteris and Psammiosorus, along with Oleandra, constituted Kramer's Oleandraceae. It is now known that Kramer's version of Dryopteridaceae is polyphyletic. Arthropteris (including Psammiosorus) lies within Tectariaceae and Tectariaceae is sister to a clade consisting of Oleandraceae, Davalliaceae, and Polypodiaceae. In 2006, in a revision of fern classification, Tectariaceae was an accepted family. In 2007, a molecular phylogenetic study of Dryopteridaceae included Pleocnemia and showed that it belongs in Dryopteridaceae. Also in 2007, Dracoglossum was named as a new genus. It has since been removed to Lomariopsidaceae. The following cladogram for the suborder Polypodiineae (eupolypods I), based on the consensus cladogram in the Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group classification of 2016 (PPG I), shows a likely phylogenetic relationship between Tectariaceae and the other families of the clade. In 2016, a cladistic analysis of Tectariaceae separated two new genera, Draconopteris and Malaifilix, from Tectaria sensu stricto. The analysis arranged the genera as follows: