Asplenium platyneuron plant. Similar buds have also been reported from the single-sorus spleenwort, "Asplenium monanthes". The species most similar to "Asplenium platyneuron" is the black-stemmed spleenwort, "A. resiliens". However, this stipe of this species is darker, and the pinnae are opposite, rather than alternate, along the rachis. Neither black-stemmed spleenwort nor the other pinnate American spleenworts have dimorphic fertile and sterile fronds. It might be confused with a young Christmas fern, "Polystichum acrostichoides", but that species is generally much larger and has a green, scaly stipe and rachis. It is very similar to Boydston's spleenwort, "Asplenium × boydstoniae", a backcross with Tutwiler's
Plant functional type Plant functional type Plant functional types (PFTs) is a system used by climatologists to classify plants according to their physical, phylogenetic and phenological characteristics as part of an overall effort to develop a vegetation model for use in land use studies and climate models. PFTs provide a finer level of modeling than biomes, which represent gross areas such as desert, savannah, deciduous forest. In creating a PFT model, areas as small as 1 km are modeled by defining the predominant plant type for that area, interpreted from satellite data or other means. For each plant functional type, a number of