Grimmia

Grimmia
Grimmia pulvinata
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
Division:	Bryophyta
Class:	Bryopsida
Subclass:	Dicranidae
Order:	Grimmiales
Family:	Grimmiaceae
Genus:	Grimmia Hedw.

Grimmia dissimulata habit dry 2009-01-29

Grimmia maido habit moist 2008-11-08

Grimmia torenii habit dry 2008-11-07

Grimmia is a genus of mosses (Bryophyta), originally named by Jakob Friedrich Ehrhart^{[citation needed][1]} in honour of , a physician and botanist from Gotha, Germany.

Geographic distribution[]

Although predominantly occurring in the moderate zones, representatives of the cosmopolitan genus Grimmia may be found in all parts of the world, from Alaska to the most southern point of Chile, and from Siberia to South Africa, though in tropic regions, e.g. Hawaii and Indonesia, Grimmia species only occur high up in the mountains.

Identification[]

Grimmia is a notoriously difficult genus in terms of identification, and in the majority of herbaria a considerable number of species was found misidentified. The American bryologist Geneva Sayre^[2] (1911–1992), who worked for many years on a monograph of the North American Grimmias, indicated in an original way these difficulties, as she said: "it contains an ambigua, a varia, a decipiens, a controversa, a revisa and at least two anomalas".^[3]

Publications[]

In the ,^[4] the genus Grimmia is represented with 800 names of published species. As since Loeske (1930),^[5] no revision of the European species had been carried out.

The Dutch bryologist H. C. Greven started in 1990 with Grimmia fieldwork and a revision of the Grimmia collections from important European herbaria. The results were published in "Grimmia Hedw. (Grimmiaceae, Musci) in Europe".^[6]

After examining the Grimmia collections from herbaria in North- and South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and about 50 Grimmia collecting trips in all continents, Grimmias of the World was published.^[7] An important contribution was the revision of Grimmia in North America.^[8]

In the past decades, some more bryologists became interested in the genus Grimmia. Jesús Muñoz published a herbaria revision of Grimmia in Latin America,^[9] and Maier studied herbarium specimens of Grimmia from the Himalaya.^[10]

Classification[]

The genus Grimmia contains the following species:^[11]

Latest discovered species[]

In the past 15 years (1996 to 2010), the following Grimmia species have been discovered and described:

1. (Greven 1996)^[12]
2. (Greven 1998)^[13]
3. (Muñoz 1998)^[14]
4. (Greven 1998)^[15]
5. (Greven 1999)^[16]
6. G (Muñoz 1999)^[9]
7. (Goffinet & Greven 2000)^[17]
8. (Maier 2002b)^[18]
9. (Greven 2002)^[19]
10. (Muñoz, Shevock & Toren 2002)^[20]
11. (Greven 2003)^[7]
12. (Greven 2003)^[7]
13. (Greven 2003)^[7]
14. (Greven 2003)^[7]
15. (Hastings & Greven 2007)^[8]
16. (Hastings 2008)^[21]
17. (Greven 2010)^[22]

References[]

External links[]

• Grimmias of the World Online reference guide, including more than 2000 macro- and microscopic photos of all 96 recognised Grimmia species. Additionally, the website includes a Worldchecklist, table of World distribution, European checklist and major ecological and morphological characters of the Grimmia species.