Cololejeunea cardiocarpa

Detailed description

Plants small, consisting of isolated stems appressed to the substrate. Shoots usually 600–800 µm wide. Stems are slender, c. 34–36 µm wide, producing small fascicles of rhizoids near and slightly below the base of each leaf. The leaves are flat when wet or dry, closely appressed to the substrate, ovate, widely spreading, somewhat imbricate, the dorsal base somewhat overlapping the stem. The lobe is c.330–380 µm long by 225–245 µm wide, with both margins slightly curved to nearly straight, with the apex blunt to rounded, and the base strongly narrowed. The apex of mature and well developed leaves is tipped with a group of hyaline fingerlike empty cells (these being c.9–14 × 30–46 µm). The lobule is inflated, broadly ellipsoidal, strongly constricted at the base, averaging c.0.35–0.4× as long as the lobe, 120–150 µm long × 120–135 µm wide; keel convex, barely crenulate because of the convex cells, lobule apex marked by an obtuse 1-celled tooth; midway between this tooth and the keel is an elongate 2-celled apical tooth c.38 µm long. All cells are of one type, thin-walled and with small trigones. The cells are 13–15(–18) µm diameter near apex and on margin and (12)–16–17 × 17–22 µm medially. Oil bodies of the New Zealand material (2–)3–7 per cell, sub spherical in leaf cells and 2–3 µm diameter, coarsely granular.