family
Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...
of
heterosporous
Heterospory is the production of spores of two different sizes and sexes by the sporophytes of land plants. The smaller of these, the microspore, is male and the larger megaspore is female. Heterospory evolved during the Devonian period from is ...
fern
A fern (Polypodiopsida or Polypodiophyta ) is a member of a group of vascular plants (plants with xylem and phloem) that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers. The polypodiophytes include all living pteridophytes except t ...
s in the order
Salviniales
The order Salviniales (formerly known as the Hydropteridales and including the former Marsileales) is an order of ferns in the class Polypodiopsida.
Description
Salviniales are all aquatic and differ from all other ferns in being heterosporous, ...
. The Salviniaceae contain the two genera ''
Azolla
''Azolla'' (mosquito fern, duckweed fern, fairy moss, water fern) is a genus of seven species of aquatic ferns in the family Salviniaceae. They are extremely reduced in form and specialized, looking nothing like other typical ferns but more rese ...
'' and ''
Salvinia
''Salvinia'', a genus in the family Salviniaceae, is a floating fern named in honor of Anton Maria Salvini, a 17th-century Italian scientist. Watermoss is a common name for ''Salvinia''. The genus was published in 1754 by Jean-François Ségui ...
'', with about 20 known species in total. The oldest records of the family date to the Late Cretaceous. ''Azolla'' was previously placed in its own family, Azollaceae, but research has shown ''Azolla'' and ''Salvinia'' to be sister genera with the likely
phylogenic
In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...