Ophioglossum vulgatum


Ophioglossum vulgatum, commonly known as adder's-tongue, southern adder's-tongue or adder's-tongue fern, is a species of fern in the family Ophioglossaceae.
The chloroplast genome was reported to have a size of 138,562 base pairs.

Description

Ophioglossum vulgatum is a perennial species. The plant grows from a rhizome base to 10–20 cm tall. It consists of a two-part frond, separated into a 4-12 cm rounded diamond-shaped leaf sheath and narrow branchless spore-bearing spike. Leaf fronds are ovate in shape and possess smooth toothless lobes. The spike has around 10-40 segments on each side.

Distribution

It is native to many regions with a wide scattered distribution: throughout temperate through tropical Africa and throughout the temperate Northern Hemisphere in Europe, northeastern North America, temperate Asia, and Eurasia.

Habitat

This small, hard-to-spot plant can occur singly in unimproved pastures, rock crevices and grassy path-sides, but also can occur in colonies of hundreds of plants in sand dunes.
In Finland, unlike elsewhere, it grows on seashores, unlike other parts of the world where it tends to be a calciphile. Finland has fitting lime rich soil habitat sparsely, but the plant has found an equivalent living habitat from Finland's seashores affected by a post-glacial rebound: land just risen from the sea is often quite neutral and contains mineral salts in addition to being open and bare enough.

Reproduction

Ophioglossum vulgatum can reproduce vegetatively through new buds that sprout from the rhizome, which allows the plant to from patches. The plant can also reproduce sexually via spores.

Rarity

This species is rare in most European countries. In Ukraine, there were recorded 280 loci: 152 before 1980, after 1980 – 120, as before and after 1980 – 8 locations.

Uses

Traditional European folk use of leaves and rhizomes as a poultice for wounds. This remedy was sometimes called the "Green Oil of Charity". A tea made from the leaves was used as a traditional European folk remedy for internal bleeding and vomiting.

Taxonomy

Linnaeus described adder's-tongue with the binomial Ophioglossum vulgatum in his Species Plantarum of 1753.