''Cyathea arborea'' (vernacular English: West Indian treefern, vernacular Spanish: ''helecho gigante'' or ''palo camarón'') is a plant of the family

Cyatheaceae The Cyatheaceae are a family of ferns, the scaly tree ferns, one of eight families in the order Cyatheales in the Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group classification of 2016 (PPG I). Alternatively, the family may defined much more broadly (Cyatheaceae '' ...

in the order

Cyatheales The order Cyatheales, which includes most tree ferns, is a taxonomic order of the fern class, Polypodiopsida. No clear morphological features characterize all of the Cyatheales, but DNA sequence data indicate the order is monophyletic. Some sp ...

. Tree ferns are an ancient growth form of plant, although Cyatheales evolved fairly recent and are only distantly related to earlier tree ferns. Like other modern fern they originate and almost exclusively grow in tropical and subtropical forests, with one species native to the Mediterranean. This species of tree fern is native to the Caribbean, including Cuba,

Hispaniola Hispaniola (, also ; es, La Española; Latin and french: Hispaniola; ht, Ispayola; tnq, Ayiti or Quisqueya) is an island in the Caribbean that is part of the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and th ...

, and the

El Yunque National Forest El Yunque National Forest ( es, Bosque Nacional El Yunque), formerly known as the Caribbean National Forest (or ''Bosque Nacional del Caribe''), is a forest located in northeastern Puerto Rico. It is the only tropical rainforest in the United Sta ...

in Puerto Rico.

Description

This

perennial A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also wide ...

fern can reach a height of 27 feet. It has a thornless trunk measuring from 3 to 5 inches. The surface of the trunk is hard with a soft, white core. Its crown has 10 or more leaves in the form of a fan. When they are young, its leaves are rolled up and as they grow they unroll until they reach their horizontal position. As with all ferns, species of the Cyatheaceae reproduce from spores. These are produced in small

sporangia A sporangium (; from Late Latin, ) is an enclosure in which spores are formed. It can be composed of a single cell or can be multicellular. Virtually all plants, fungi, and many other lineages form sporangia at some point in their life cyc ...

on the bottom side of their leaves.Mowbray, Alan M. Bosque Nacional del Caribe Guía Interpretativa de Palo Colorado. 2002. Servicio Forestal de los Estados Unidos. Bosque Nacional del Caribe.Miner Solá, E. (2000). Árboles de Puerto Rico y exóticos. 3rd Edition. . Editorial Puerto Rico.

Habitat and ecology

Tree ferns as a group are mostly found it wet tropical forest, with ''Cyathea arborea'' itself being found in locations such as such as

Puerto Rican moist forests The Puerto Rican moist forests are a tropical moist broadleaf forest ecoregion in Puerto Rico. They cover an area of . Lowland forests Lowland forests are found throughout the island's coastal lowlands except for the dry southwest. Character ...

and

Hispaniolan moist forests The Hispaniolan moist forests are a tropical moist broadleaf forest ecoregion on the island of Hispaniola. They cover , around 60% of the island's area. Geography Moist forests occur on most of the eastern half the Dominican Republic, stretc ...

. While they can grow under a canopy, it is likely that natural disturbances such as landslides and hurricanes create gaps in the forest canopy that allow them to regenerate.

References

arborea Arborea is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Oristano, Sardinia, Italy, whose economy is largely based on agriculture and cattle breeding with production of vegetables, rice, fruit and milk (notably the local milk product Arborea). Histo ...

Flora of the Caribbean Plants described in 1753 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus Flora without expected TNC conservation status {{Cyatheales-stub