The genus Lomariopsis currently contains about 60 species from the Neotropics, Africa, the islands of the Indian Ocean, Asia, and the Oceanian region. However, this is probably an underestimation of the true diversity of the genus, and it is thought to be understudied, and recent reviews have left out regions where it is likely to be more specious, notably Asia and Oceania. This is made more complicated by the ability of some species to produce gametophyte-only populations, which can establish as long-lived, asexual colonies (unlike Seed Plants, Ferns have a two stage life-cycle, with the familiar Plant being the diploid sporophyte; this produces spores that grow into a haploid gametophyte, which are either male, producing sperm, or female, producing eggs, with the fertilised female egg growing into a new sporophyte), which can sustain themselves through vegetative reproduction, meaning that quite different-looking Plants can be different stages of the same species.
In a paper published in the journal Phytokeys on 20 December 2021, Yi-Hsuan Wu of the Institute of Molecular & Cellular Biology at the National Tsing Hua University, Chih-Yun Sun of the Department of Life Science at the National Tsing Hua University, Atsushi Ebihara of the Department of Botany at the National Museum of Nature and Science, Ngan Thi Lu of the Department of Biology at the Vietnam National Museum of Nature, and the Graduate University of Science and Technology of the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, Germinal Rouhan of the Institut de Systématique, Evolution, Biodiversité at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, the Sorbonne Université, the École pratique des hautes études, and the Université des Antilles, and Li-Yaung Kuo, also of the Institute of Molecular & Cellular Biology and Department of Life Science at the National Tsing Hua University, describe two new species of Lomariopsis with distributions in Vietnam, south China, and Taiwan.
The first new species is named Lomariopsis longini, where 'longini' aludes to the Lance of Longinus, which was reputedly used to pierce the side of Jesus during his crucifixion, in reference to the shape of the terminal pinnae of sterile leaves. This Fern grows from a scaley red underground rhizome, producing both sterile and fertile fronds about 60 cm long, though the fertile (spore-bearing) fronds have notably more contracted pinnae (leaflets) than the sterile ones. This species was found growing in the understory of evergreen broad leaf forests, at altitudes below 1000 m, in Nghe An, Quang Binh, Quang Tri, and Vinh Phuc provinces in northern Vietnam, and Yunnan Province in southwest China.
The second new species is named Lomariopsis moorei, where 'moorei' honours Shann-Jye Moore, a noted Taiwanese expert on Ferns, after whom the Mr. Shann-Jye Moore Memorial Scholarship of the Taiwan Society of Plant Systematics is named. This species also grows from a scaley red subterranean rhizome, reaching about 50 cm high. It can be distinguished by a swollen ring at the region of articulation on the abaxial side of the pinnae (especially the upper pinnae). This species was found growing in the understory of evergreen broad leaf forests, at altitudes below 1000 m, in Taiwan and Hainan Province, China.
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