The family Blechnaceae is a moderately sized leptosporangiate fern lineage, with 24 genera
and around 250 species. Struthiopteris accommodates small to medium‐sized, dimorphic,
pinnate species. It is composed of six northern species: S. spicant is distributed in western
parts of Europe and North America; S. fallax is endemic to Iceland; S. niponica, S. amabilis
and S. castanea are endemic to Japan, and S. hancockii occurs in Japan and Taiwan. Due
to the lack of a global review and to its highly interesting geographical distribution, this …

… Due to the lack of a global review and to its highly interesting geographical distribution,
this genus merits further study to clarify its taxonomy, species relationships, and
distributional pattern. The present study aims to achieve the following goals: (a) identify and
describe morphological characters supporting the taxonomy of Struthiopteris; (b) reconstruct
a complete phylogeny for the genus; (c) study the biogeographical history of Struthiopteris
at a global scale. The morphological … For all these reasons, we propose to rescue the now-disused …