Details about map content are available here Click on the map dots to view record details.
Introduction
The wiry fern-moss is a circumboreal species found in Eurasia and North America. In British Columbia, it has been collected from across the province, including the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii).
Species Information
Click on the image below to view an
expanded illustration for this species.
Species description: Genus name derived from Abies (fir tree) based on its fancied resemblance to a diminutive fir tree. The species name has the same derivation.
Reproduction: Sporophytes rare, maturing in summer. Sporangium short cylindric and curved, red-brown when ripe; seta smooth, redbrown, elongate. Plants somewhat brittle when dry, probably fragments serve in vegetative reproduction.
Distinguishing characteristics: The usually dark green to brownish-green, regularly pinnate plants that occur in drier terrestrial sites usually sufficient to distinguish this species.
Habit: Reclining or suberect interwoven plants, yellow-green to rusty brown to yellowish; never glossy; when wet the leaves diverge and the plant appears brighter green, upon drying the shoots seem more slender and the leaves sheathe the stem more closely
Similar Species: Helodium blandowii is similar in appearance, but this species is in damp sites and the green stems are often covered with paraphyllia readily visible with a hand lens. In Abietinella, paraphyllia are small and usually obscured by overlapping leaves, and the stems are reddish. Claopodium may also be confused with A. abietina but the two species of similar size (c. bolanderi and C. crispifolium) have stem leaves with attenuate sharp white points; in Abietinella the apices are never attenuate or white. In CIao podium the leaves are contorted when dry; in Abietinella they are simply imbricate.
Habitat / Range
Habitat
Dry, usually open, sites in well-drained forest, on cliff shelves and tundra, especially on calcareous substrata; more frequent in interior and northern localities; rare near the coast.
Range
World Distribution
Circumboreal in Eurasia and North America; extending, in North America, southward along mountains to Virginia in the east and Arizona in the west.
 - kootenay np - july 24, 2011.jpg)
