Herzogobryum filiforme R.M.Schust.
Herzogobryum filiforme R.M.Schust., Phytologia 45: 422. 1980.
Type: New Zealand, South Is., Mt. Cook Natl. Park, above Sealy Lakes, Schuster 67-4417.
Plants wiry, very slender, terete, light green to light grey green, except for the brownish red–tinged gynoecia (inner bracts), the sterile axes only 100–130(150) µm in diam., the shoots elongated and arcuate, rather subacutely tipped distally, for the most part simple and hardly branched. Stems whitish green, very slender. Leaves dense, erect-appressed, scale-like and very small, hardly discernible on the leafy shoots, unistratose throughout, rather concave, when flattened quadrate-rotundate to rotundate-ovate, widest usually just below middle and here under 19 cells broad, ca. 180–200 µm wide × 190–225 µm long, ca. 0.15–0.25 bifid; lobes as wide or wider than long, broad acute, apiculate with a single hyaline, often elongated cell; sinus V-shaped to broadly rectangulate. Leaves light green, rather hyaline, with a border of echlorophyllose, hyaline cells; marginal cells thin- or weakly thick-walled, ± elongated at nearly right angles to leaf margins, typically 9–14 µm wide × 16–30(32) µm long, triangular to finger-like, free for ca. 0.25–0.75 their length, the free ends projecting as narrowed, distally rounded, smooth crenulations; intramarginal, subapical, median and basal cells almost uniformly similar in size, short-oblong to polygonal, equally thick-walled (the walls much thicker than in marginal cells), 9–17 × (10)12–18 µm; basal cells to 10–13 × 16–21 µm; surface everywhere smooth. Underleaves absent. Asexual reproduction absent. Fungal partner absent.
Dioecious. Androecia unknown. Gynoecia terminal on stem or branches, abruptly rather clavate-subcapitate, ± frontally compressed, becoming gradually larger distally, consisting of 4–6 pairs of tightly imbricate bifid bracts; bracts of innermost series 0.35–0.45(0.5) bifid, the lobes narrow and long-acute to subacuminate, of thick-walled, brownish to reddish castaneous cells, the lobe margins irregularly crenulate to denticulate with often elongated, tapered to pointed, triangular to diamond-shaped cells, the bracts without hyaline margins. Perianth (only juvenile known) with mouth hyaline, the margin like those of leaves.
Sporophyte unknown.
Distribution and Ecology : Endemic to New Zealand: South Island (870–1220 m). Known only from Canterbury and Westland EPs. The type is from the alpine tussock grassland zone above Sealy Lakes (Mt. Cook Natl. Park) admixed with Acrolophozia pectinata and Gymnomitrion. Schuster (1996d) also cited a specimen from the upper Otira River (Arthur’s Pass Natl. Park, Westland), a J. Child collection found at 1220 m on moist rocks near the snowline, occurring with Acrolophozia pectinata, Andreaea acutifolia, Gymnomitrion cuspidatum, Diplophyllum dioicum and Riccardia crassa (CHR 427297). Also occurring on rock in the vicinity of Wakefield Falls in the upper reaches of a Podocarpus hallii forest (east-facing slope of Mt. Wakefield, Mt. Cook Natl. Park, 870 m).
Comments : Plants are wiry and notably slender with sterile shoots only 100–130 µm wide, and are light to greyish green, lacking the reddish pigmentation typically found in our other Herzogobryum species. The leaves are bilobed to ca. 0.15–0.25, and are at most only 18–20 cells wide at their widest point. The lobes are as wide or wider than long, apiculate and terminate in a single cell that is often elongated.
