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An Excerpt from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter
from the January 12, 2007 Newsletter issued from Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve Headquarters in Jalpan, Querétaro, MÉXICO
A PUCKERED HEMIONITIS CANDIDA?
On both sides of the reservoir several miles of one-lane gravel roads have been cut into the mountainsides. Besides displaying fine examples of the region's much folded and faulted limestone geology, the roadcuts display a goodly number of plants adapted to rock faces, especially ferns. One particular fern species is common and very distinctive -- and I've had a dickens of a time trying to identify it because of the lack of fieldguides here -- catches your eye nowadays because its frond undersurface is chalky white. When the frond is dry its blade margins curl up showing the whiteness, as seen above.
The fronds in that picture are pretty curled up, but since the picture was made it's been dry and now those fronds look like little more than popcorn puffs on black stems.
NOTE: In 2007 it was hard to guess what fern this was, but maybe a Cheilanthes. In 2022 there's much more information on the Interet and I'm more familiar with the area's ferns. Now I'm guessing that this very inadequate picture shows HEMIONITIS CANDIDA, formerly Cheilanthes candida and Notholaena candida, distributed from northwest Mexico south to Nicaragua, known to favor limestone soils, roadsides and rocky areas.