Anomodontaceae
Dioicous. Asexual propagules absent. Mats, often glaucous, on trees (not in Victoria), rocks or soil. Stems differentiated into creeping primary stems and erect or ascending secondary stems and branches, covered with rhizoids ventrally; primary stem bearing scale-like leaves; secondary stems sparingly to highly branched, irregularly pinnate; paraphyllia absent; pseudoparaphyllia absent or rarely present (not in Victoria); central strand well differentiated (not in Victoria) or not. Secondary stem and branch leaves arranged around the stem and facing all directions, indistinctly in three rows, or complanate (not in Victoria), monomorphic, erect (not in Victoria), secund (not in Victoria), or wide-spreading when moist, appressed and straight (not in Victoria) or curled or flexuose and twisted around stem when dry, decurrent; apex rounded (not in Victoria), obtuse (not in Victoria), acute, or acuminate, rarely hyaline, without a hairpoint; costa single, ending before mid-leaf (not in Victoria), ending in the apical half of leaf, subpercurrent or rarely percurrent (not in Victoria), rarely bifid (not in Victoria); margin entire, crenulate (not in Victoria), serrulate (not in Victoria), or denticulate (not in Victoria), plane (not in Victoria), undulate (not in Victoria), or revolute, without a border; laminal cells hexagonal to subquadrate or rhomboid, uni- (not in Victoria) or pluripapillose, becoming smooth and sometimes oblong at base. Pleurocarpous (not in Victoria) or rarely acrocarpous. Fully developed sporophytes not recorded in Victorian species. Capsules erect, symmetric, exserted or rarely immersed, operculate, with or without an annulus. Operculum conic to obliquely short-rostrate. Calyptra cucullate, smooth to papillose, glabrous or hirsute. Peristome double and alternate or single; exostome of 16 entire teeth; endostome of 16 segments arising from a basal membrane, or rudimentary or absent; cilia rudimentary or absent.
Four genera and 15 species, mostly in the northern hemisphere where widespread throughout Europe, Asia and North and Central America including the Caribbean, and with three species occurring in the southern hemisphere in Australia, New Zealand, Mauritius, and South Africa; one genus and species in Victoria.
The correct family placement of the one Victorian species, Anomodon tasmanicus Broth., requires confirmation. Anomodon tasmanicus was removed from Anomodon and placed in the genus Triquetrella of the distantly related Pottiaceae based on its terminal perichaetia and similar leaf morphology (Granzow-de la Cerda 1989). However, apart from the apparently acrocarpous condition and its lack of paraphyllia, this species has been noted as also closely resembling the Thuidiaceae (Scott & Stone 1976; Sollman 2001), in which Anomodontaceae has often been included (e.g. Brotherus 1925, Iwatsuki 1963; Corley et al. 1981). Preliminary analyses of chloroplast rps4 and trnL-trnF DNA sequences confirm that A. tasmanicus is a ciliate arthrodont and hence misplaced in the Pottiaceae (Hedderson & Zander 2007), and is apparently closely related to the Racopilaceae and misplaced in Anomodontaceae as well (Spence 2012). Anomodon tasmanicus is here retained in the Anomodontaceae until an exact phylogenetic placement, that is inferred from phylogenetic analyses of DNA sequences, is published.
Phylogenies of DNA sequences from all genomic compartments from Anomodon species have shown several of the species previously placed in Anomodon to be misplaced in that genus and even in that family (Ignatov et al. 2019), highlighting the importance of molecular confirmation of the Victorian species in this genus and family. The Anomodontaceae is here considered equivalent to a lineage resolved in DNA phylogenies that comprises Anomodon, the recently described genera Anomodontella and Anomodontopsis, which both comprise former Anomodon species, and Haplohymenium (Ignatov et al. 2019). The remaining genera included in Anomodontaceae by Goffinet & Buck (2004), appear to belong to other families based on molecular phylogenies (e.g. Cox et al. 2010; Huttanen et al. 2012; Ignatov et al. 2019).
Brotherus, V.F. (1925). Musci (Laubmoos), in Engler, A. (ed.), Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien, edition 2. Bd 11. Engelmann, Leipzig.
Corley, M.F.V.; Crundwell, A.C.; Düll, R.; Hill, M.O.; Smith, A.J.E. (1981). Mosses of Europe and the Azores: an annotated list of species, with synonyms from the recent literature. Journal of Bryology 11: 609–689.
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.
Goffinet, B.; Buck, W. R. (2004). Systematics of the Bryophyta (Mosses): from Molecules to a Revised Classification. Monographs in Systematic Botany from the Missouri Botanical Garden 98: 205–239.
Granzow-de la Cerda, I. (1989). Notes on five species of Anomodon, some with erroneous identity, including two new combinations. The Bryologist 92: 381–386.
Hedderson, T.A.; Zander, R.H. (2007). Triquetrella mxinwana, a new moss species from South Africa, with a phylogenetic and biogeographic hypothesis for the genus. Journal of Bryology 29: 151–160.
Huttunen, S. et al. (2012). Disentangling knots of rapid evolution: origin and diversification of the moss order Hypnales. Journal of Bryology 34: 187–211.
Ignatov, M.S.; Fedorova, A.V.; Fedosov, V.E. (2019). On the taxonomy of Anomodontaceae and Heterocladium (Bryophyta). Arctoa 28: 75–102.
Iwatsuki, Z. (1963). A revision of the East Asiatic species of the genus Anomodon. Journal of the Hattori Botanical Laboratory 26: 27–62.
Scott, G.A.M.; Stone, I.G. (1976). The mosses of Southern Australia. Academic Press, London, New York, San Francisco.
Sollman, P. (2001). Studies on several Australian pottiaceous mosses, including some nomina nuda. Tropical Bryology 20: 73–77.
Spence, J.R. (2012). Anomodontaceae, in Australian Mosses Online. 66..
