| | The Lycopodiales of Britain and Ireland (Diphasiastrum, Huperzia, Isoetes, Lycopodium, Selaginella) |
“Alpine Clubmoss”.
Lycopodium alpinum L.
Morphology. Stems elongated, with numerous small leaves; creeping, and rooting directly at intervals along their length (the erect branches to 10 cm); 15–50(–100) cm long; ostensibly monopodial vegetatively; with only slightly flattened branches; without secondary thickening. Leaves eligulate; strongly 4-ranked on the branches (in alternating, opposite pairs, glaucous); 2–4 mm long; appressed; not hair-pointed.
Homosporous. Sporophylls differing markedly from the foliage leaves; aggregated into well defined terminal cones. Cones solitary, sessile at the tips of the normal shoots. The sporangia basal and subsessile on the adaxial surfaces of the sporophylls, non-septate.
Ecology and distribution. Lowland, upland and montane (ascending to about 1300 m); moors, montane grassland and mountain tops. Rather common throughout the British Isles, especially at higher elevations.
Classification. Family Lycopodiaceae.
Ilustrations. • D. alpinum: Eng. Bot. 1834 (1886). • D. alpinum (Sowerby and Johnson, 1859). • British Lycopods: Sowerby and Johnson (1863). 1765, Diphasiastrum (Lycopodium) clavatum; 1766, Lycopodium annotinum; 1767, Diphasiastrum (Lycopodium) alpinum; 1768, Huperzia (Lycopodium) selago; 1769, Lycopodiella (Lycopodium) inundata; 1770, Selaginella selaginoides. From Sowerby and Johnson (1863).
We advise against extracting comparative information from the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using the DELTA data files or the interactive key, which allows access to the character list, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lacking specified attributes, and distributions of character states within any set of taxa. See also Guidelines for using data taken from Web publications.
Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 2007 onwards. The Lycopodiales of Britain and Ireland (Diphasiastrum, Huperzia, Isoetes, Lycopodium, Selaginella). Version: 5th August 2019. delta-intkey.com’.
