edgepedia

Fern allies: lycophytes and horsetails

44 articles

Lycopodiaceae systematics and classification

Lycopodiaceae, the clubmoss and firmoss family, is an ancient family of vascular plants with about 400 species worldwide, now divided into three subfamilies and 17 genera.

Lycopodiales

Lycopodiales (clubmosses) is an order of homosporous vascular plants containing the single family Lycopodiaceae, with about 400 species on all continents except Antarctica, three subfamilies, a fossil record over 400 million years old, and spores historically used in flash photography.

Lycopodiella

Lycopodiella, the bog clubmosses, is a genus of terrestrial clubmosses named in 1964 by the Czech botanist Jiří Holub, with about 41 species most diverse in South America.

Lycopodiopsida

Lycopodiopsida (clubmosses, lycophytes) is a class of seedless vascular plants, sister to all other extant vascular plants, with three families: Lycopodiaceae, Isoëtaceae, and Selaginellaceae, descended from Devonian-Carboniferous dominants.

Lycopodium

Lycopodium (clubmoss) is a Linnaean 1753 genus of spore-bearing vascular plants in Lycopodiaceae, cosmopolitan, with 59 accepted species, hydrophobic flammable spores used in pyrotechnics and pharmacognosy, and 508 reported secondary metabolites.

Lycopodium clavatum

Lycopodium clavatum, stag's-horn or running clubmoss, is a widespread clubmoss of the temperate Northern Hemisphere and tropical mountains, slow-growing from spores, secure globally (G5) but seriously threatened in California (CNPS 4.1), used in traditional medicine and sporopollenin drug delivery research.

Lycopodium powder

Lycopodium powder, also called clubmoss spores or lycopodium spores (Lycopodium clavatum), is a yellow-tan flammable spore powder used in pyrotechnics, early flash photography, and as a reference dust in explosion testing; St 1 class, lower explosion limit 15 g/m³.

Selaginella

Selaginella (spikemoss) is a cosmopolitan genus of about 750 heterosporous lycophyte species with ligulate four-ranked leaves and terminal strobili, dating to roughly 383 million years ago, including resurrection plants like S. lepidophylla.

Selaginellaceae

Selaginellaceae (spikemoss family), a lycophyte family with the single genus Selaginella, about 700–800 species worldwide; ligulate leaves, heterospory, rhizophores, split into 7 subfamilies and 19 genera in 2023.

Selaginellales

Selaginellales is an order of lycophytes containing one family, Selaginellaceae, and one genus, Selaginella (spikemoss), with about 750 heterosporous, ligulate-leaved species worldwide except Antarctica, dating to the Late Devonian.

Silica in Equisetum: deposition and biomineralization

Silica in Equisetum (horsetails): amorphous SiO2 biomineralization from silicic acid, up to 25% of dry matter, deposited via callose templating and NIP aquaporin transporters, distinguishing horsetails from grasses.

Southern Hemisphere quillworts

Southern Hemisphere quillworts are small, grass-like aquatic to semi-aquatic Isoetes species of nutrient-poor wetlands, native to Africa, Australasia, and South America, with northern-central South America the richest hotspot.

Threatened quillworts

Threatened quillworts, genus Isoëtes (Isoetaceae), ancient aquatic and terrestrial lycopsids; about 38% of aquatic species threatened, with eutrophication, pollution, habitat loss, and drought driving declines in Europe, China, India, and North America.

Water transport and hydraulics of Equisetum

Water transport and hydraulics of Equisetum describes how horsetails, lacking vessels and secondary growth, move water through primary xylem and internal canals, with root pressure driving guttation and embolism refilling.