Ophioglossaceae, family of four or five genera and about 100 species of primitive ferns (order Ophioglossales). The plants are largely terrestrial with a few epiphytic species and are found throughout tropical and temperate regions. The taxonomy of the group is contentious.
Its members are characterized by leaves (fronds) that are divided into two parts, a sterile green blade and a fertile spike with spore-producing structures (sporangia) embedded in its tissues. Most species produce only one such frond each season. As eusporangiate ferns, the sporangia arise from several epidermal cells—not from a single cell as in the common leptosporangiate ferns of the class Polypodiopsida. The separate genera are distinguished mainly by the position and structure of the sporangia.
The genus Ophioglossum (adder’s-tongue ferns), with 46 tropical and temperate species, has sporangia in two rows near the tip of a usually unbranched narrow fertile spike. The group is of interest because its members have the highest number of chromosomes of any organisms known to science; O. reticulatum has 1,440 chromosomes. The world’s smallest terrestrial fern is an Indian species (O. malviae), reaching an average size of only 1–1.2 cm (0.39–0.47 inch).
The genus Botrychium, with about 50 species, distributed throughout the world, includes the grape ferns and moonworts. The rattlesnake fern (B. virginianum) of North America is sometimes placed by itself in the genus Botrypus.
The remaining genera are monotypic, meaning that they each consist of a single species. Helminthostachys zeylanica in Sri Lanka and regions extending from the Himalayas to Queensland, Australia, has sporangia in small groups on both sides of the fertile spike. Mankyua chejuense is endemic to Cheju Island of South Korea