Warburgiella macrospora
(Dixon & Sainsbury) B.C.Tan, W.B.Schofield & H.P.RamsayAutoicous. Mats on trees and logs, yellow-brown, bronze or yellow-green. Stems to 5 cm long, irregularly pinnately branched, brown, with brown rhizoids scattered on underside. Leaves falcate-secund, narrowly ovate-lanceolate, 1–1.7 mm long, 0.25–0.4 mm wide; apex acuminate; margins serrate near apex, slightly recurved on one or both sides; cells linear, 45–100 μm long, 2–7 μm wide, shorter near apex, papillose; alar cells abruptly differentiated, 2–4, inflated, oblong, 40–80 μm long, 15–28 μm wide, ±coloured, with 2 or 3 quadrate or irregular cells above. Perichaetial leaves short-cuspidate or long-acuminate, entire to slightly serrulate near apex. Seta 5–10 mm long, red, smooth. Capsules ellipsoid, ovoid or cylindric, erect, straight, 0.9–1.5 mm long. Operculum conic, 0.7–1.3 mm long. Spores 15–30 μm long.
OtP, GGr, NIS, HSF, OtR, VAlp. Recorded from the Grampians, Otways, Yarra Ranges through to Baw Baw Plateau, Bogong High Plains and near Beechworth in a variety of habitats including rainforest, beside creeks in sclerophyll forests and in the alpine zone and subalpine woodland. Also QLD, NSW and Tas.
Fife (2012) synonymised this species with W. leucocytus (Müll.Hal.) B.C.Tan, W.B.Schofield & H.P.Ramsay because of reported difficulty discerning the two species in New Zealand using the characters used by Ramsay et al. (2002) to distinguish the two species in Australia (Fife 2016). However, there is comparable genetic divergence between the two species in some chloroplast and mitochondrial DNA regions as there is between other Sematophyllaceae species and even genera (Carvalho-Silva et al. 2017) and the potential difference of presence or absence of cilia between the two species not specifically discussed by Ramsay et al. (2002) was not dismissed by Fife (2016). For these reasons, W. macrospora is tentatively retained here as distinct from W. leucocyta.
Misapplications
Carvalho-Silva, M.; Stech, M.; Soares-Silva, L.H.; Buck, W.R.; Wickett, N.J.; Liu, Y.; Câmara, P.E.A.S. (2017). A molecular phylogeny of the Sematophyllaceae s.l. (Hypnales) based on plastid, mitochondrial and nuclear markers, and its taxonomic implications. Taxon 66: 811–831.
Fife, A.J. (2012). New taxa of Sematophyllum and Wijkia (Musci: Sematophyllaceae), with a key to New Zealand Sematophyllaceae. New Zealand Journal of Botany 50: 435–447.
Fife, A.J. (2016). Sematophyllaceae, in Heenan, P.B., Breitwieser, I. & Wilton, A.D. (eds), Flora of New Zealand- mosses. Fascicle 28. Manaaki Whenua Press, Lincoln.
Ramsay, H.P.; Schofield, W.B.; Tan, B.C. (2002). The family Sematophyllaceae (Bryopsida) in Australia. Part 1: Introduction, family data, key to genera and the genera Wijkia, Acanthorrhynchium, Trimegistia and Sematophyllum. *Journal of the Hattori Botanical Laboratory * 92: 1–50.
