Branching architecture in pleurocarpous mosses

The concepts of acrocarpy and pleurocarpy in mosses have profound implications for the understanding and utilization of morphological characters related to branching architecture in the systematic study of pleurocarpous mosses. The need for precision in observation and character analysis is made very apparent when such information is included in cladistic analysis, and traditional terms such as "dendroid" can be shown to include a variety of combinations of independent characters. Deconstruction of growth form into individual characters or character systems that can be coded for cladistic analysis allows systematically informative characters to be identified and evolutionary patterns investigated. Here the components of branching architecture are analysed, described, and figured, including case studies of individual species.