Saelania Lindberg, Utkast till en Naturlig Gruppering af Europas Bladmossor. 35. 1878.
[For the Finnish botanist Anders Thiodolf Saelan]
Rodney D. Seppelt
Plants small, tufted, glaucous bluish green or sometimes yellowish green. Stems erect, simple or branched. Leaves erect to erect-spreading when moist, somewhat flexuose or contorted when dry, narrowly lanceolate, gradually acuminate, ± keeled; margins plane or narrowly recurved and entire below, irregularly and often doubly toothed or serrate above; costa single, percurrent to shortly excurrent, prominent abaxially; lamina cells smooth throughout, distal cells subquadrate to short-rectangular, firm-walled. Specialized asexual reproduction unknown. Sexual condition autoicous; perigonia terminal on well-developed branches; perichaetial leaves not differentiated. Seta erect, yellow to yellow-brown. Capsule erect and symmetric, cylindric, yellow-brown, ± longitudinally plicate when dry and empty; annulus persistent, of 2--3 rows of large, pale cells; operculum rostrate; peristome single, the 16 reddish-brown teeth split into 2 densely papillose filaments, inserted near the capsule mouth, to 1 mm long. Calyptra cucullate, falling early. Spores globose, finely papillose.
A monotypic genus: primarily North Temperate Zone, also s Africa, Pacific Islands (Hawaii, New Zealand).
This taxon is morphologically close to Ceratodon, but differs in having the leaves a glaucous blue-green; seta yellow to yellow-brown; capsule yellow-brown, erect, and somewhat plicate but not strongly sulcate when dry; peristome reddish-brown, densely papillose, divided to near the base into two unbordered filaments; and spores greenish to yellowish brown and larger, 15--20(--22) µm. In Ceratodon the leaves are yellowish green to brownish or reddish green; seta reddish to purplish; capsules dark reddish brown to purplish, erect to inclined or horizontal, and when dry usually strongly sulcate; peristome teeth dark red, papillose, divided to near the base into 2 filiform segments with pale borders and the segments often united at the nodes; and spores yellow to greenish yellow, and smaller (10--15 µm).
SELECTED REFERENCES
Crum, H. A. and L. E. Anderson. 1981. Mosses of Eastern North America. Vol. 1. New York. Grout, A. J. 1936. Moss Flora of North America north of Mexico. Vol. 1, Part 1. Newfane. Ireland, R. R. 1982. Moss Flora of the Maritime Provinces, Publications in Botany 13, National Museums of Canada. Ottawa. Lawton, E. 1971. Moss Flora of the Pacific Northwest. Hattori Botanical Laboratory. Nichinan. Nyholm, E. 1986. Illustrated Flora of Nordic Mosses. Fasc. 1. Fissidentaceae-Seligeriaceae. Stockholm.
ADDITIONAL REFERENCES
Mårtensson, O. and E. Nilsson. 1974. On the morphological color of bryophytes. Lindbergia 2: 145--159. Matsui, T. and Z. Iwatsuki. 1990. A taxonomic revision of the family Ditrichaceae (Musci) of Japan, Korea and Taiwan. J. Hattori Bot. Lab. 68: 317--366. Nilsson, E. and O. Mårtensson. 1971. Chemical studies on bryophytes. II. (-)-16α-hydroxykaurane from Saelania glaucescens (Hedw.) Broth. Acta Chemica Scandinavica 25: 1486--1487.
