Fissidentaceae

Diagnosis: Plants small, to 5.5 mm tall. Leaves to 2.5 x 0.5 mm, acute to apiculate to acuminate, vaginant laminae equal, sometimes with clavate propagula in the leaf axils; margins ± entire, limbate on all laminae; costa percurrent to short-excurrent; cells hexagonal, 10-15 µm, smooth to somewhat bulging, those juxtacostally in proximal part of vaginant laminae enlarged, oblong and pellucid.

Distribution: Mexico; Central America; Caribbean, Western and Northern South America, Brazil: China, Eastern Asia; Indian subcontinent, Indo-China, Malesia; Northwestern, Southwestern and South Central Pacific

Ecology: In non-flooded lowland to montane forest, 20-2750 m, on soil and rocks, frequent along stream banks.

Notes: A widely distributed species in neotropical lowlands. Typically the plants are pale green and frondiform. The only other non-papillose, limbate species in our area is F. flaccidus which is easily separated from F. zollingeri, by among other things the cell size difference and the multistratose (3-4 stratose) limbidium of F. flaccidus versus the 1-2 stratose limbidium of F. zollingeri.

Type Citation: Annales des Sciences Naturelles; Botanique, sér. 3 4: 114. 1845.

Type Locality: Java

Type Collection: Zollinger 1604

Other Published Figures: P. A. Florschutz. 1964. Musci. Flora of Surinam 6(1): 1-271. fig. 10, as F. kegelianus; Crum & Anderson 1981. Mosses of Eastern N. A. fig. 41 A-D, as F. kegelianus.