Rhizogonium lindigii (Hampe) Mitt.

  • Authority

    Sharp, Aaron J., et al. 1994. The Moss Flora of Mexico. Part One: Sphagnales to Bryales. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 69 (1): 1-452.

  • Family

    Rhizogoniaceae

  • Scientific Name

    Rhizogonium lindigii (Hampe) Mitt.

  • Description

    Species Description - Plants slender (1.5-2 cm high), soft, shiny, pale, green, yellow, or brownish-yellow, radiculose only at base. Stems slender, wiry-flexuose, red-shiny and nearly naked below. Lower leaves very small and remote. Upper leaves more crowded, wide-spreading and bifarious, somewhat curved-secund but not much altered on drying, 1-1.5 mm long, oblongovate to elliptic, broadly acute and abruptly cuspidate, not decurrent; margins coarsely and irregularly serrate to incised in the upper half or somewhat more, single-toothed, not thickened or bordered; costa excurrent, smooth at back; cells hexagonal, moderately thick-walled, 12-15 µm. Dioicous. Perichaetial buds clustered at the base of stems. Sporophytes unknown.

  • Discussion

    Fig. 439

    R. lindigii (Hampe) Mitt., J. Linn. Soc, Bot. 12: 328. 1869.

    Mnium lindigii Hampe, Ann Sci. Nat. Bot. V, 4: 345. 1865.

    The attractive, pale, shiny plants, with broad leaves in two rows, are distinctive because of nearly naked, shiny, red stem bases and coarsely serrate, unbordered leaf margins Material from Mitten's herbarium (without data) and a Sumatran collection named by Dixon in the University of Michigan Herbarium as R. novae-hollandiae (Brid.) Brid. are indistinguishable from this species, and Roth's unpublished drawings of R. lindigii, R. novae-hollandiae, and var. patagonica Card. & Broth, indicate a considerable similarity of all three taxa. The synonymy should be further investigated, especially since R. novae-hollandiae has nomenclatural priority. (It may be noted that Sainsbury' s description of R. novae-hollandiae, in his New Zealand flora, does not conform at all well to the Mexican plants or to those referred to here as named by Dixon and Mitten.)

    Very similar to R. lindigii, the Costa Rican R. sublimbatum Crum shows some differentiation of cells in two to three rows at bistratose leaf margins.

    Leptotheca bolivianaHerz. (L. costaricensis Ther.) occurs in Costa Rica, Colombia, Bolivia, and Jamaica and perhaps in Mexico and Guatemala as well. The plants are rather small, tomentose below but bearing crowded, reddish brood filaments in the axils of upper leaves. The leaves are narrowly oblong-lanceolate, with plane, irregularly toothed margins, costa toothed at back above and excurrent as an awn, and cells small, thick-walled, and smooth.

  • Distribution

    On moist rotten stumps at 2800 m alt.; Chiapas (San Cristobal de las Casas Sharp, TENN).-Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Panama, Colombia and Venezuela; reported from the Dominican Republic, Guyana, and Brazil; Sumatr

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