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California Moss eFlora
|Jan 1 2013 ·|
Leucolepis is one of our most easily recognized of mosses. The plant is truly dendroid (as opposed to plumose), and it thus may resemble a palm (an erect stem that distally has a clustered series of spirally inserted branches). The only other western North American plants that can be considered truly dendroid are Climacium (only just entering California) and Thamnobryum (rarely encountered in mixed conifer forests in northern California). Climacium can be readily recognized by the dense coating of paraphyllia-like structures over the stems and branches (visible even under a hand-lens). Thamnobryum has broadly rounded leaf apices differing from the acute to acuminate apices of Leucolepis. The deltoid triangular leaves on the erect main stem of Leucolepis differ from the stem leaves of the other two dendroid genera both in their shape and in the bleached nature of those leaves even in the young plant.
see key to Plagiomnium Etc.
Leucolepis acanthoneura (Schwägrichen) Lindberg
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