Vittaria Sm., Mém. Acad. Roy. Sci. (Turin)

Kessler, Michael, Smith, Alan R. & Prado, Jefferson, 2017, Prodromus of a fern flora for Bolivia. XXVII. Pteridaceae, Phytotaxa 332 (3), pp. 201-250 : 244

Vittaria Sm., Mém. Acad. Roy. Sci. (Turin) 5: 413, pl. 9, fig. 5. 1793.

Characterized by greenish to yellowish petioles, and very narrow, linear blades <4 mm wide, each blade with a single row of areoles and a single line of sporangia on both sides of the costae. Vittaria is nearly unique in ferns in having two kinds of spores: most species have globose-tetrahedral spores with a triradiate scar (e.g., V. graminifolia ) while others have bilateral, reniform spores with a monolete scar (e.g., V. lineata ). Vittaria was previously considered to include about 50 species, but most of these are now placed in Ananthacorus , Radiovittaria , and, in the Old World, Haplopteris . A genus of about seven species, with the two most wide-ranging ones in Bolivia. All vittarias are neotropical except Vittaria isoëtifolia Bory , which occurs in Africa, Madagascar, and the Mascarenes. The neotropical ones were treated by Benedict (1914).

In phylogenetic analyses, Vittaria is sister to a small clade comprising two monotypic genera, Scoliosorus (southern Mexico to Panama) + Ananthacorus (which see; Schuettpelz et al. 2016).