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Pteridaceae family

Broadleaf Maidenhair Adiantum latifolium

Native

Broadleaf Maidenhair is a perennial fern native to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It grows to 2.0 ft.

More about this plant

Adiantum latifolium, the broadleaf maidenhair, is a species of maidenhair fern in the family Pteridaceae. It was first described in 1783 in Encyclopédie méthodique Botanique. The species is native to a wide range from southern Mexico through Central America and much of tropical South America, as well as several Caribbean islands. Its distribution includes Argentina (Northeast), Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, and the Leeward and Windward Islands. The plant has also been introduced into South and Southeast Asia, including the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Malaya. A. latifolium is a rhizomatous geophyte that grows primarily in wet tropical biomes. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Height · Foliage
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
Height
2.0 ft
Lifespan
Perennial
Foliage
Evergreen broadleaf
In the garden
Herb layer — Sits in the herb of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts Documented caterpillar host

Recorded feeding on Adiantum in North America, including:

Callopistria floridensis · Florida Fern Moth
Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
Wildlife & visitors 1 mammal

Open records of who else uses Broadleaf Maidenhair — a generalist food-web signal, kept separate from the keystone Ecological Value.

Recorded eaten by 1 mammal species (fruit, seed, browse):

Tapirus terrestris · Lowland Tapir
Interaction records (observations, not exhaustive) from GloBI → (CC0). Counts are distinct species; names are the most-recorded. Common names from Wikidata (CC0).
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
How we know this (2) Methods & honest limits
Leaf build Direct fact

We read each species’ measured specific leaf area (leaf area per unit dry weight) from the Global Spectrum dataset and band it: thin & fast (high SLA), medium, or thick & tough (low SLA). The global median is about 10 mm²/mg.

Honest limits: A species-mean from pooled measurements — individual plants vary with light and site. A broad strategy signal, not a precise per-plant figure.

Díaz, S. et al. (2022) The global spectrum of plant form and function: enhanced species-level trait dataset. Scientific Data 9:755.
Photosynthesis Direct fact

A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (15) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[06] Wetland indicator — USACE National Wetland Plant List (2022)
[08] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[09] Ecological value — GloBI
[12] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[13] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[14] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (CC0)
[15] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

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