Asplenium monanthes
The single-sorus spleenwort is a slender, once-pinnate fern with dark reddish-brown stalks and small, asymmetric pinnae that each carry one sorus along the lower edge. It is widespread in cool, shady, humid places in tropical mountains of the Americas and Africa, on Atlantic islands and in Hawaii, with outlying populations in the south-eastern United States. It reproduces without sex (apomixis), and in cultivation it wants cool nights, shade, humid but moving air and a moist, gritty, humus-rich medium.
Where it grows wild
Grows on shaded soil banks, mossy rocks and rock crevices in pine-oak forest, cloud forest and secondary vegetation, and in Africa on evergreen forest floors near streams, in bamboo thickets and under Podocarpus. In North Carolina it grows in crevices of granitic rock in cool, humid grottos near waterfalls. It favours shade, high humidity and moist rock faces.
The 386 records with an elevation span 116–3849 m (median 2486 m). In central Mexico it is reported at 1400–2300 m, but many Mexican records come from higher, around 2500–3000 m, which is where most of the measured sites are.
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Profiles are drafts built from measured range and climate and from published sources; each section carries its own confidence in the app.