Flora of North America species comparison

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Palhinhaea cernua

nodding club-moss, staghorn clubmoss
Roots

clustered at soil contacts of horizontal stem, 5–30 × 0.4–0.6 cm.
Horizontal stems

with leaves remote, linear-needlelike, recurved at base, upcurved at apex, 2.9–3.1 × 0.1–0.15 mm.
Upright shoots

to 45 × 3.5 mm, gradually diminishing and branched successively 3 times, 3–12 cm from base to form complex treelike habit.
Lateral branchlets

spreading-ascending, drooping at tips, 0.2–0.4 mm wide, leaves needlelike, recurved basally, upcurved apically, 2–2.5 × 0.1–0.2 mm, leaves and stems sometimes hairy near strobili.
Strobili

nodding at 60–80° to subtending vegetative branch, 0.4–0.8 × 0.15–0.2 cm.
Sporophylls

trowel-shaped, 1.5–2 × 0.7–0.8 mm, margins fringed, teeth to 0.2 mm, mostly branched.

Palhinhaea cernua
Habitat Wet depressions and ditches in pinelands, road banks
Elevation 0–100 m [0–300 ft]
Distribution
map from FNA
AL; FL; GA; LA; MS; SC
[WildflowerSearch map]
[BONAP county map]
Discussion

Palhinhaea cernua is a showy plant. This is probably the world's most abundant club-moss. The species overwinters as buried stem tips, the rest of the plant dying.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Parent taxa Lycopodiaceae > Palhinhaea
Synonyms Lycopodium cernuum
Name authority (Linnaeus) Vasconcellos & Franco: Bol. Soc. Brot. ser. 2, 41: 25. (1967)
Source FNA vol. 2. Treatment authors: Warren H. Wagner Jr., Joseph M. Beitel.
Web links 
Unless otherwise noted, all data comes from the online version of the Flora of North America, who have made most of their content available via a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).



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