Cheilanthes, commonly known as lip ferns, is a genus of about 180 species of rock-dwelling ferns with a cosmopolitan distribution in warm, dry, rocky regions, often growing in small crevices high up on cliffs. Most are small, sturdy and evergreen. The leaves, often densely covered in trichomes, spring directly from the rootstocks. Many of them are desert ferns, curling up during dry times and reviving with the coming of moisture. At the ends of veins sporangia, or spore-bearing structures, are protected by leaf margins, which curl over them.
GENUS
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Cheilanthes, commonly known as lip ferns, is a genus of about 180 species of rock-dwelling ferns with a cosmopolitan distribution in warm, dry, rocky regions, often growing in small crevices high up on cliffs. Most are small, sturdy and evergreen. The leaves, often densely covered in trichomes, spring directly from the rootstocks. Many of them are desert ferns, curling up during dry times and reviving with the coming of moisture. At the ends of veins sporangia, or spore-bearing structures, are protected by leaf margins, which curl over them.
==Taxonomy== The genus name is derived from the Greek words χεῖλος (cheilos), meaning "lip," and ἄνθος (anthos), meaning "flower." This refers to the lip-like false indusia which curl over the sporangia, and has given the common name of "lip fern" to members of the genus.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).