Pylaisiaceae
Autoicous (not in Victoria) or dioicous. Asexual reproduction by axillary clusters of brood branchlets (not in Victoria). Tufts or mats on soil, rocks (not in Victoria), logs (not in Victoria) or trees (not in Victoria), sometimes aquatic. Stem creeping, ascending or erect, regularly or irregularly pinnately branched, sometimes with cuspidate branches, with sparse rhizoids below leaf insertions; paraphyllia absent; pseudoparaphyllia present, filamentous (not in Victoria) or foliose; central strand present, sometimes weakly developed, or absent (not in Victoria). Leaves arranged around stem and facing all directions or complanate, ovate to lanceolate, straight and erect to erect-spreading or falcate-secund (not in Victoria) when moist, scarcely altered or becoming appressed when dry, monomorphic (not in Victoria), those of branches differentiated from those on stems by size or shape, or dimorphic with dorsal leaves differing in size and shape from ventral leaves (not in Victoria); apex acute (not in Victoria) or acuminate; costa absent (not in Victoria) or short and double and sometimes faint; margins entire, serrulate, denticulate (not in Victoria) or serrate (not in Victoria), plane, incurved or recurved (not in Victoria), without a border; laminal cells linear to rhomboid (not in Victoria), smooth or rarely prorate (not in Victoria); alar cells not differentiated (not in Victoria), weakly differentiated (not in Victoria) and quadrate to rectangular or clearly differentiated and inflated and hyaline. Pleurocarpous. Capsule erect (not in Victoria), inclined, horizontal or pendent (not in Victoria), straight (not in Victoria) or curved, exserted, operculate, sometimes ribbed, with or without (not in Victoria) an annulus; calyptra cucullate, smooth, glabrous; operculum conic or conic-apiculate. Persitome double and alternate; exostome of 16 entire teeth; endostome of 16 segments, with a high basal membrane; cilia present, or rarely rudimentary (not in Victoria) or absent (not in Victoria).
Cosmopolitan, with twelve genera and around 400 species; one genus and species in Victoria.
Many of the genera traditionally included in the Hypnaceae as well as most species of Hypnum, have been shown in phylogenies of DNA sequence data to form a group that includes Pylaisia, that is closer related to other pleurocarp families than it is to the type of Hypnum, H. cupressiforme Hedw. (Tsubota et al. 2002; Gardiner et al. 2005; Arikawa et al. 2008; Schlesak et al. 2018; Kučera et al. 2019). Consequently, the family Pylaisiaceae was reinstated for this group (Gardiner et al. 2005), which in Victoria includes Calliergonella (Cox et al. 2010; Câmara et al. 2018; Schlesak et al. 2018; Kučera et al. 2019). Consistent with many other large pleurocarp families, morphological features shared by all taxa that are unique to this family are lacking (Kučera et al. 2019). In general, Pylaisiaceae species have an unreduced ‘perfect hypnoid’ double peristome with cilia, foliose pseudoparaphyllia, narrow or no central stem strand, and leaves that are usually falcate-secund, ovate to lanceolate, without costae or with short and double costae and have differentiated subquadrate or inflated alar cells (Frey & Stech 2009).
Arikawa, T.; Tsubota, H.; Deguchi, H.; Nishimura, N.; Higuchi, M. (2008). Phylogenetic analysis of the family Hypnaceae based on rbcL gene sequences, in Mohamed, H., Baki, B.B., Nasrulhaq-Boyce, A. & Lee, P.K.Y. (eds), Bryology in the New Millennium, pp. 215–225. University of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.
Câmara, P.E.A.S.; Carvalho-Silva, M.; Henriques, D.K.; Guerra, J.; Gallego, M.T.; Poveda, D.R.; Stech, M. (2018). Pylaisiaceae Schimp. (Bryophyta) revisited. Journal of Bryology 40: 251–264.
Cox, C.J.; Goffinet, B.; Wickett, N.J.; Boles, S.B.; Shaw, A.J. (2010). Moss diversity: A molecular phylogenetic analysis of genera. Phytotaxa 9: 175–195.
Frey, W.; Stech, M. (2009). Division Bryophyta Schimp. (Musci, Mosses), in Frey, W. (ed.), Syllabus of plant families. Adolf Engler’s syllabus der pflanzenfamilien. 13th edn. Part 3. Bryophytes ad seedless vascular plants 3. Pp. 116–257. Gebrüder Borntraeger Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart.
Gardiner, A.; Ignatov, M.; Huttunen, S.; Troitsky, A. (2005). On resurrection of the families Pseudoleskeaceae Schimp. And Pylaisiaceae Schimp. (Musci, Hypnales). Taxon 54: 651–663.
Kučera, J.; Kuznetsova, O.I.; Manukjanová, A.; Ignatov, M.S. (2019). A phylogenetic revision of the genus Hypnum: Toward completion. Taxon 68: 628–660.
Schlesak, S.; Hedenäs, L.; Nebel, M.; Quandt, D. (2018). Cleaning a taxonomic dustbin: placing the European Hypnum species in a phylogenetic context!. Bryophyte Diversity & Evolution 40: 37–54.
Tsubota, H.; Arikawa, H.; Akiyama, H.; Luna, E.D.; González, D.; Higuchi, M.; Deguchi, H. (2002). Molecular phylogeny of hypnobryalean mosses as inferred from a large-scale dataset of chloroplast rbcL, with special reference to the Hypnaceae and possibly related families. Hikobia 13: 645–665.