ABSTRACT
Cladistic analyses of pleurocarpous mosses based on morphological characters give slightly lower consistency indexes than in other organisms. This may be due to higher frequencies of similar, non-homologous character states, of character state reversals, or of quantitative characters in pleurocarps than in organisms in general. To investigate the phylogeny of the entire group of pleurocarpous mosses, a stratified sampling procedure is described. Despite many contributions on characters in pleurocarpous mosses, there are obviously many problems remaining. There is especially a need for large-scale comparative studies of the morphology, anatomy and ontogeny of many organs. K. Goebel and J. R. Rohrer pointed out that there are differences in the ontogeny of paraphyllia in these two families Hylocomiaceae and the Thuidiaceae. The use of axillary hairs in pleurocarp taxonomy was reviewed by Hedenas, who described the structure of these hairs in 200, mainly European species.
