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Psilotum is a genus of fern-like vascular plants.It is one of two genera in the family Psilotaceae commonly known as whisk ferns, the other being Tmesipteris.Plants in these two genera were once thought to be descended from the earliest surviving vascular plants, but more recent phylogenies place them as basal ferns, as a sister group to Ophioglossales.
The family contains two genera, Psilotum and Tmesipteris. The first genus, Psilotum, consists of small shrubby plants of the dry tropics commonly known as "whisk ferns". The other genus, Tmesipteris, is an epiphyte found in Australia, New Zealand, and New Caledonia
Leafless, dichotomously branching fossils bearing spines and possessing vascular tissue from the Devonian of Gaspé Peninsula, Canada, were thought by Dawson in 1859 to resemble the modern whiskfern, Psilotum. Accordingly, he named his new genus Psilophyton, the type species being P. princeps.
Tmesipteris, the hanging fork ferns, is a genus of ferns, one of two genera in the family Psilotaceae, order Psilotales (the other being Psilotum). Tmesipteris is restricted to certain lands in the Southern Pacific, notably Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia.
Psilotum complanatum lives in moist evergreen forests on the Malay Peninsula, Australia, Fiji islands, Mexico, Hawaii and South America. In India it is reported only from the Nicobar group of islands. Plants are typically found hanging from the trunks of trees or other epiphytic plant species. [5]
Psilotum nudum, the whisk fern, [3] is a fernlike plant. Like the other species in the order Psilotales, it lacks roots. [4]Its name, Psilotum nudum, means "bare naked" in Latin, because it lacks (or seems to lack) most of the organs of typical vascular plants, as a result of evolutionary reduction.