9b. Codriophorus sect. Fascicularia (Bednarek-Ochyra) Bednarek-Ochyra & Ochyra in R. Ochyra et al., Cens. Cat. Polish Mosses. 140. 2003.
Racomitrium sect. Fascicularia Bednarek-Ochyra, Fragm. Florist. Geobot., Ser. Polon. 2: 130. 1995
Stems often subpinnately branched with numerous short, tuft-like, lateral, horizontal branchlets, giving the plants a nodose appearance. Leaves ovate-lanceolate, narrowly lanceolate to linear-lanceolate, from an ovate, oblong- or ovate-lanceolate, not or distinctly plicate base, gradually short- or long-acuminate, often with a long, subulate, canaliculate-concave, straight or sometimes wavy to serpentine acumen; margins 1-stratose, recurved to revolute on both sides; apices muticous, acute, subacute to narrowly rounded-obtuse, entire, erose-dentate or denticulate-cristate, epilose or terminated with a hyaline, denticulate awn; costa narrow, vanishing in mid leaf to subpercurrent or percurrent, in the proximal part lying at the bottom of a deep, wide- or narrow-angled furrow, open or partly enclosed by the strongly infolded leaf base, in transverse section 2-stratose throughout, with occasional 3-stratose spots near the base or 2-stratose in the distal and 3-4-stratose in the proximal parts, flattened or convex on the ventral side, not prominently convex, lunate or flattened on the abaxial side, with cells in the abaxial and adaxial rows of similar size and shape or with 1-2 abaxial rows composed of small stereid cells in the proximal 1/2 or at the extreme base; laminal cells 1-stratose, short- or long-rectangular to linear, thick- and sinuose-walled throughout; basal marginal border differentiated, pellucid; distal laminal cells exceptionally variously 2-stratose and isodiametric.
Species 6 (3 in the flora): North America, South America (Argentina, Chile), Europe, arctic and temperate Asia, Atlantic Islands (Azores, Gough Island, Iceland, South Georgia, Tristan da Cunha), Pacific Islands (Hawaiian Islands, Society Islands).
Members of sect. Fascicularia are recognized by their narrowly lanceolate to linear- or ovate-lanceolate leaves, short-rectangular to linear laminal cells, and peculiar anatomical structure of the costa, which is narrow, usually less than 80 µm wide at the base, and mostly 2-stratose throughout and composed of undifferentiated cells in both adaxial and abaxial rows. Only in the highly isolated C. varius is the costa broader, to 110 µm near the base, and 3-4-stratose in the proximal half, but in all species of the section it is lying at the base of a deep and narrow-angled groove that is often partly enclosed by the strongly folded leaf base.
