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Huperzia
Also called Club Moss, Firmoss, Gemma Firmoss, Firmosses, Temperate Firmosses
Huperzia is a genus of lycophytes (clubmosses, also called firmosses) in the family Lycopodiaceae; most are small, upright, unbranched evergreen plants found in cool temperate, arctic and alpine habitats, and few are commonly grown. Care notes below describe the genus loosely, as its members are seldom cultivated.
Huperzia is a genus of lycophyte plants, sometimes known as the firmosses or fir clubmosses; the Flora of North America calls them gemma fir-mosses. This genus was originally included in the related genus Lycopodium, from which it differs in having undifferentiated sporangial leaves, and the sporangia not formed into apical cones. The common name firmoss, used for some of the north temperate species, refers to their superficial resemblance to branches of fir (Abies), a conifer. As of 2020, two very different circumscriptions of the genus were in use. In the Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group classification of 2016 (PPG I), Huperzia is one of three genera in the subfamily Huperzioideae of the family Lycopodiaceae. Most species in the subfamily are placed in the genus Phlegmariurus. Huperzia is left with about 25 species, although not all have been formally transferred to other genera.
As circumscribed in the PPG I classification, Huperzia is distributed in temperate, arctic and alpine habitats, including mountains in tropical Asia. Its species are terrestrial or grow on rocks. Phlegmariurus is epiphytic, and has a worldwide tropical distribution, so when Huperzia is defined broadly to include all three genera of the subfamily Huperzioideae, it has an almost worldwide distribution, absent mainly in North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and Western Asia.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Huperzia by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
