Funaria Hedw.

Plants medium-sized to robust, gregarious, usually yellow-green. Stems red-brown, rarely pale, usually branched once by subperigonial innovation which overtops the perigonium, in cross-section with a central strand and parenchymatous medulla, a cortex of 2–4 layers of thick-walled, red-brown cells, and a hyalodermis, beset below with smooth, red-brown rhizoids. Leaves erect or erect-spreading, both moist and dry, concave, oblong-ovate to obovate, tapered to an acute, acuminate, or obtuse apex, entire or weakly serrulate above; upper laminal cells oblong-hexagonal, rarely more or less quadrate, in lower portion longer and more oblong, usually 4–6 cells at alar angles inflated; marginal cells not or very weakly differentiated, never forming a distinct border; costa subpercurrent, percurrent, or rarely excurrent to form an awn. Axillary hairs as per family.

Autoicous or rarely polygamous. Perichaetia lacking paraphyses. Perigonia usually single, terminating a shoot from which the perichaetial branch arises by innovation, with numerous antheridia and paraphyses with globose terminal cells. Setae yellow- or red-brown, dextrorse below, and sinistrorse or dextrorse above, from less than 8 to >50 mm, smooth, curved (sometimes only in uppermost portion) or rarely geniculate when moist, strongly or weakly hygroscopic; capsules strongly asymmetric to symmetric, inclined, erect, or pendent (when moist), broadly ovoid-pyriform, narrowly pyriform or ovoid, red-brown at maturity, sulcate, with a neck ⅓ to ½ capsule length; mouth from c. ⅓ to equal the diameter of the capsule, oblique, or transverse; exothecial cells oblong to oblong-hexagonal, mostly 2–5:1, in cross-section with cuneate walls and forming alternating bands of thicker and thin-walled cells, c. 5–8 rows oblate at mouth; operculum plano-convex or low conic, composed of firm-walled, oblong cells in sigmoid files, bordered by radially elongate red-brown cells; stomata immersed, single-celled, numerous and restricted to neck; annulus compound, strongly revoluble, composed of 1–3 rows of isodiametric, usually yellowish cells and one row of larger, more or less ellipsoid, vesicular and nearly hyaline cells. Peristome double; exostome teeth inserted at mouth, sigmoid, fused at their apices by a lattice disc, marginally appendiculate nearly throughout or merely at apex, papillose-striolate below, papillose above (most, if not all ornamentation on the outer surface), outer surface with a median zig-zag line; inner surface strongly trabeculate; endostome segments opposite and wider than the teeth, coherent at base, from ⅓ to equal the height of the teeth, acuminate or truncate and retuse, free or adherent (especially in lower portions) to teeth, papillose-striolate; cilia absent. Calyptra inflated at base, cucullate, and rostrate. Spores spherical or subreniform, mostly 10–30 μm, uniformly verrucate or verrucate-lirate (often appearing nearly smooth under the light microscope), lacking trilete scars.

Funaria, in the narrow sense that it is accepted here (excluding Entosthodon), is a genus of fewer than 20 species. It is of nearly cosmopolitan distribution, but in the tropics it is largely restricted to higher elevations. Species of Funaria are usually associated with disturbed and often nutrient- or mineral-enriched soils. Funaria calvescens Schwägr. (often treated as a variety of F. hygrometrica) is widely distributed from mostly high altitude sites in tropical areas. The genus extends into high arctic regions as F. polaris Bryhn (which is usually associated with lemming burrows), and F. arctica (Berggr.) Kindb. Funaria flavicans Michx. is widely distributed in eastern North America. Funaria microstoma is widely distributed world-wide, but is mostly rare throughout its range and is associated with salt spray or saline springs or lakes; it extends to high northern latitudes and also occurs in Australia. Only F. hygrometrica is documented from N.Z.

Funaria microstoma Bruch ex Schimp. [Flora 23: 850, 1840] was recorded from the Māhia Peninsula (Hawke’s Bay L.D.) by Sainsbury (1955). This record is rejected. The collection on which the report is founded (G.O.K. Sainsbury 4047; WELT M016982!; CHR 454724!; FH!) has strongly oblique mouths, which appear, in the dry material, to be relatively small in relation to the capsule and spores (c. 27–30 µm diam.), near the upper limit of continuous variation for F. hygrometrica. However, the endostome in the Sainsbury collection is well developed, with the segments acute and nearly the length of the exostome teeth (rather than short and clearly bilobed apically as in F. microstoma). Funaria microstoma is associated with saline habitats throughout its range and is recorded from a small number of mainland Australian sites (sometimes named there as F. salsicola Müll.Hal. [Hedwigia 41: 120, 1902]), but to date no verifiable material has been found in N.Z.