Ceratodon purpureus |
|||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ceratodon moss, fire-moss |
|||||||||
Habit | Plants in open to dense tufts, turfs, or mats, green, dark green, brownish green, light green or yellow-green, usually darker proximally, often tinged reddish brown or purple. | ||||||||
Stems | (0.2–)1–3(–4) cm. |
||||||||
Leaves | crowded, erect-patent to contorted or somewhat crisped, rarely straight when dry, lanceolate, ovate-lanceolate, or triangular-lanceolate, 0.35–2.8 mm, margins recurved to near apex or rarely plane, irregularly serrate to uneven or smooth distally, apices acute to short-acuminate or, rarely, obtuse; costa strong, sub-percurrent to excurrent, sometimes as a long, smooth awn, medial laminal cells (6.5–)8–12(–14) µm, cell walls even, usually of medium thickness, often somewhat thicker and rounded at the cell angles. |
||||||||
Seta | 1–3(–4) cm, various shades of red, orange, or yellow. |
||||||||
Capsule | oblong to long-cylindric, (1–)2–2.5(–3) mm, smooth to strongly sulcate when dry; free to united at their nodes, finely papillose to spinulose-papillose, dark red and bordered to completely pale and absent borders. |
||||||||
Spores | (10–)11–14(–17) µm. |
||||||||
Ceratodon purpureus |
|||||||||
Distribution |
Nearly worldwide
|
||||||||
Discussion | Subspecies 4 (3 in the flora). (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
||||||||
Key |
|
||||||||
Source | FNA vol. 27, p. 446. | ||||||||
Parent taxa | Ditrichaceae > Ceratodon | ||||||||
Sibling taxa | |||||||||
Subordinate taxa | |||||||||
Synonyms | Dicranum purpureum, C. purpurascens, C. purpureus var. purpurascens, C. purpureus var. xanthopus | ||||||||
Name authority | (Hedwig) Bridel: Bryol. Univ. 1:480. (1826) | ||||||||
Web links |