Common names: pala'a, palapala'a, pli 'il o Pala'e (Pala'e's skirt), pala'e (P. & E.)
Indigenous
China, + Latin suffix -ensis, indicating place or country of growth or origin.
Rhizomes short-creeping, densely clothed with narrow, brown, waxy scales tapering to hairlike tips. Fronds 15-80 cm long, very variable in size. Stipes closely set, often as long as blades, brown and scaly at bases, straw-colored and glabrous distally. Blades 3-pinnate-pinnatifid to 4-pinnate, ovate-lanceolate. Ultimate segments wedge-shaped, narrow, but often variable in width. Veins in-conspicuous, forking, usually one per ultimate segment. Sori elongate on tips of ultimate segments. Indusia pocketlike (attached at base and sides), opening toward margin.
Common in mesic to wet forests, grasslands, and shrublands and along streamsides, 40-1,310 m, all major islands. One of the most common and widespread native ferns in Hawai 'i, Sphenomeris chinensis is quite variable in size, cutting, and width of the ultimate segments. It is also native to Madagascar, China, the Himalayas, India, Sri Lanka, the Malay Peninsula, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Polynesia.
Pala 'a is interlaced with maile (Alyxia oliviformis) in lei and is used decoratively because of its sturdy, lacy fronds. A brown dye for kapa (bark cloth) was extracted rom the rhizomes and fronds. The plant was sacred to the Hawaiian hula goddess Laka and was used to decorate the altar in the halau hula (house for hula instruction). Pala'a was also used as a medicine for various female disorders.
Sphenomeris chinensis may be recognized by its 3-pinnate-pinnatifid to 4-pinnate fronds with narrow, wedge-shaped ultimate segments and its sori with indusia open-outward on the tips of the ultimate segments.