Greek hemionos - mule; once regarded as causing sterility and worn by women as a charm against pregnancy.
Rhizome short-creeping, thin, covered with pale brown scales and hairs. Sterile and fertile fronds similar or the fertile blades sometimes slightly smaller and erect. Fronds evergreen, in clusters, undivided or palmate. Blade thick, round to arrow-headed or palmate, covered with a soft down below. Stalk dark red to black, long. Sporangia net-like in appearance as they spread along the veins over the undersurface; indusia absent.
c. 7 species from tropical America, 1 anomalous Asian species.
Spores, leaf cuttings (H. palmata also by bulbils).
Fronds downy; sporangia forming a net-like pattern on the undersurface of the fertile blades.
Mickel (1974).
Source: (1995). Adiantaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 1, Ferns, conifers & their allies. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.