Bartramiaceae
Synoicous, autoicous, or dioicous. Asexual reproduction rarely by caducous brood branches in leaf axils toward stem apex. Tufts on soil or rocks, rarely logs or tree bases. Stems erect or occasionally decumbent, simple, fastigiate, sparingly branched near base, irregularly pinnate or with whorls of branches initiated below sporophytes, often with reddish tomentum near base or occasionally throughout most of stem; central strand present. Leaves linear to broadly ovate-lanceolate, rarely ovate-elliptic (not in Victoria), arranged around stem and facing all directions or in three (not in Victoria) or five distinct ranks, monomorphic, erect or erect- to squarrose when moist, scarcely altered, or becoming straight and appressed, crisped, twisted, secund or circinate when dry, shoulders absent or well-developed, sometimes with sheathing base, sometimes plicate; apex usually acuminate or acute, rarely obtuse (not in Victoria), often with a smooth or denticulate awn; costa extending 2/3 of leaf length or subpercurrent to excurrent, rarely rudimentary (not in Victoria) or absent (not in Victoria); margin entire to serrate, plane or revolute, without a distinct border; laminal cells linear, long-rectangular to quadrate, papillose on abaxial or rarely both leaf surfaces at one or both end walls, or more rarely over the lumen, or occasionally smooth; alar cells not or occasionally differentiated and inflated or enlarged. Acrocarpous. Capsules globose to oblong-cylindric, erect to pendent, symmetric or asymmetric with the mouth oblique, exserted, rarely immersed (not in Victoria), operculate, rarely cleistocarpous (not in Victoria), often furrowed when dry. Calyptra cucullate, smooth, glabrous. Operculum low-convex or low umbonate to high conic, occasionally rostrate. Peristome double and alternate, single or absent; exostome of 16 entire teeth or absent, sometimes apically connate; endostome of 16 segments arising from a basal membrane, rudimentary to well developed, sometimes absent, occasionally adherent to exostome; cilia well-developed (not in Victoria), rudimentary, or absent.
Cosmopolitan with ten genera and around 400 species (Virtanen 2003), but most diverse in the tropical Andes where 111 species have been recorded (Churchill et al. 1995); four genera and 18 species in Victoria.
The capsules of the Bartramiaceae are globose or nearly so and light or pale green when young and become brown and often furrowed when old, which has given rise to the vernacular name of apple mosses for this family (Griffin & Buck 1989; Gilmore 2006). In most taxa the leaves are lanceolate, the stem bears reddish brown and often dense rhizoids, and the laminal cells are prorate or papillose (Griffin & Buck 1989; Virtanen 2003).
SpinningChurchill, S.P., Griffin, III, D.; Lewis, M. (1995). Moss diversity of the tropical Andes, in Churchill, S.P., Balslev, H., Forero, E. & Luteyn, J.L. (eds.), Biodiversity and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Forests. New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York.
Gilmore, S.R. (2006). Bartramiaceae, in McCarthy, P.M. (ED.), Flora of Australia. Vol. 51 Mosses 1, pp. 248–270. ABRS, Canberra.
Griffin, III, D.; Buck, W.R. (1989). Taxonomic and Phylogenetic Studies on the Bartramiaceae. *The Bryologist * 92: 368–380.
Virtanen, V. (2003). Phylogeny of the Bartramiaceae (Bryopsida) based on morphology and on rbcL, rps4, and trnL-trnF sequence data. The Bryologist 106: 280–296.
