Flora of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago
| Flora of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago | |
English: Bristly club-moss, stiff, or interrupted club-moss,
French: Lycopode innovant,
Inuktitut: Siqpiijautit.
Lycopodiaceae, Club moss family.
Published in Nucleus (Calcutta) 1, 1: 7. 1958.
Type: Sweden, selected by Kukkonen in Jonsell, Nordic J. Bot. 16: 3. 1996. Lectotype: UPS: "Jämtl. et Lapp." herb.
Synonymy. Lycopodium annotinum L. var. alpestre Hartm., Handb. Skand. Fl., ed. 2, 294. 1832.
Lycopodium pungens Bach.Pyl., Mém. Soc. Linn. Paris 6: 182. 1827.
Lycopodium annotinum L. subsp. pungens (Bach.Pyl.) Hultén, Ark. Bot., ser. 2, 7, 1: 7. 1968a.
Vegetative morphology. Plants 5–15 cm high (to 30 cm high on continental North America); herbs; perennial herbs; not caespitose; never vegetatively proliferating by bulbils on stems or leaves, in inflorescences, from gemmiphores and gemmae, or by fragmentation. Only fibrous roots present. Roots pallid-brown. Ground level or underground stems horizontal; rhizomatous; elongate, or compact. Ground level or underground stems scales absent. Caudex absent. Aerial stems erect; not conspicuously jointed. Leaves present; distributed along the stems, or arising singly from creeping rhizomes; alternate; persistent (stiff and bristly). Petioles absent. Ligules absent. Leaf blades simple. Leaf blade bases truncate. Leaves not grass-like. Blades 2–7 mm long, 0.8–1.2 mm wide, spreading or divaricate or reflexed. Leaf appearance in Lycopodium spreading and crowded in pseudo-whorls. Blades straight or somewhat curled (slightly, particularly along horizontal stems, but without specialised leaf bases, a contrast with Diphasiastrum alpinum), linear or lanceolate, flat, with inconspicuous veins. Blade adaxial surface glabrous. Blade abaxial surface glabrous. Blade margins glabrous; apices acute.
Reproductive morphology. Sporangia in terminal cone-like structures. Aerial stems circular or oval in cross-section.
Chromosome information. 2n = 68.
2n = 68. Manton (1950 northern and western Europe); Löve and Löve (1958, 1966b); Sorsa (1958, 1961, 1962, Finland); Takamiya and Kurita (1983, Japan); Takamiya (1992, Japan).
Ploidy levels recorded 4x.
Indigenous knowledge. Inuit name Siqpiijautit means, literally, "that which is used to remove siqpik" (discharge from the inner corner of the eye). When they are ripe the plants feel soft, and according to some elders they are intoxicants. (Ootoova et al. 2001).
It is reported that after drinking the black liquid from boiled siqpiijautit a person could not get up but just lay on the ground dizzy. In the past, before there were qallunaat (Europeans) and alcohol, people used to get drunk on this. People used to make tea from many different kinds of plants, but this was the only plant that induced drunkenness (Malaija, personal communication, to Ootoova et al. 2001).
Ecology and habitat. Substrates: tundra (often in heath areas or herbmats, Porsild 1957); imperfectly drained moist areas (sunny places); gravel, sand, till; with low organic content; non-calcareous (granite or gneiss).
North American distribution. Alaska, Yukon, continental Northwest Territories, Nunavut Islands, continental Nunavut, northern Quebec, Labrador, Newfoundland. Range in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago limited. Rare. Low Arctic. Arctic islands: Baffin.
Northern hemisphere distribution. Circumpolar, or circumboreal. Northern Iceland, Northern Fennoscandian, Kanin–Pechora, Polar Ural – Novaya Zemlya, Yamal–Gydan, Taimyr – Severnaya Zemlya, Anabar–Olenyok, Kharaulakh, Yana–Kolyma, West Chukotka, South Chukotka, East Chukotka, West Alaska, North Alaska – Yukon, Central Canada, Labrador – Hudson Bay, West Greenland, East Greenland.
General notes. In striking contrast to Diphasiastrum and Huperzia, interspecific hybridisation is practically unknown in Lycopodium (Wagner and Beitel 1993).
The North American approach (Wagner and Beitel 1993) has been to neglect the variation in L. annotinum but to accept the variation in L. clavatum at the level of two species. In northwestern European and Russian views, these pairs of species/subspecies are considered comparable. The differences are mainly quantitative in both cases. Elven et al. (2003) chose to recognise subspecies in both cases, suggesting that they are pairs of closely related taxa with south to north distribution (Elven et al. 2003). Lycopodium annotinum subsp. alpestre is the only taxon of this genus in the flora region.
Plants intermediate between Lycopodium annotinum subsp. alpestre and L. annotinum subsp. annotinum are considered to belong to a form that has been called var. pungens (Bachelot de la Pylie) Desvaux. This is an invalid name (Wagner and Beitel 1993).
Illustrations. • Dry tundra habitat. Yellow-green plants near the markers in dry ericaceous tundra. Nunavut, Baffin Island, Ogac Lake, Inner Basin. 9 July, 2004. Aiken and LeBlanc 04–027. CAN 586500. • Habitat, Baffin Island. Yellow-green plants between the markers and higher up the slope. Nunavut, Baffin Island, Ogac Lake. 9 July, 2004. Aiken and LeBlanc 04–027. CAN 586500. • Close-up of plants. Yellow-green plants between the markers and higher up the slope. Growing in dry tundra with Phyllodoce. Nunavut, Baffin Island, Ogac Lake. 9 July, 2004. Aiken and LeBlanc 04–027. CAN 586500. • Close-up of plants. Close-up of plants to 7 cm high growing close together in an ericaceous tundra with little evidence of rhizomes. Nunavut, Baffin Island, Ogac Lake. 9 July, 2004. Aiken and LeBlanc 04–027. CAN 586500. • Horizontal stems and erect stems. Long horizontal stems (A) growing over a rock beside a run-off stream. Erect stems among the heather stems towards the top of the picture. Nunavut, Baffin Island, Ogac Lake. 9 July, 2004. Aiken and LeBlanc 04–027. CAN 586500. • Sporophylls without sporangia. Note green vegetative leaves and brown sporophylls. Sporangia borne in the axils of the sporophylls have been shed. Nunavut, Baffin Island, Ogac Lake. 9 July, 2004. Aiken and LeBlanc 04–027. CAN 586500. • Close-up of old cones. Cone-like strobili that have opened to reveal sporangia borne in the axils of the leaves. The leaves of this subspecies are 2.5–6 mm long, appressed and with entire margins. Those of subsp. annotinum are shallowly dentate mainly in the lower half and spreading. Greenland, Disko. CAN 4701. • Close-up of young cone: subsp. annotinum. Left, young fertile strobilus, or cone-like organ, with yellow sporangia just visible in the in the axils of the lower sporophylls. Right, sterile stem with leaves 5–8 mm long. Photo Library image S84–5636. • Leaf morphology. Contrasting leaf morphology in the three Arctic species in the Lycopodiaceae. A. Diphasiastrum alpinum. Appressed leaves with ultimate branches strictly four ranked, alternate decussate, with every pair decurrent on the stem as a pair of flanges and each flange continuous with one margin of the leaf. B. Lycopodium annotinum. Leaves spreading and crowded in pseudo-whorls. C. Huperzia selago, left a vegetative leaf; right a sporophyll leaf. • Arctic Island Distribution.
This publication is available on the internet (posted May 2011) and on CD-ROM (published in 2007). These versions are identical in content, except that the errata page for CD-ROM is accessible on the main index page of the web version.
Recommended citation for the web-based version of this publication: Aiken, S.G., Dallwitz, M.J., Consaul, L.L., McJannet, C.L., Boles, R.L., Argus, G.W., Gillett, J.M., Scott, P.J., Elven, R., LeBlanc, M.C., Gillespie, L.J., Brysting, A.K., Solstad, H., and Harris, J.G. 2007. Flora of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago: Descriptions, Illustrations, Identification, and Information Retrieval. NRC Research Press, National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa. http://nature.ca/aaflora/data, accessed on DATE.
Recommended citation for the CD-ROM version of this publication: Aiken, S.G., Dallwitz, M.J., Consaul, L.L., McJannet, C.L., Boles, R.L., Argus, G.W., Gillett, J.M., Scott, P.J., Elven, R., LeBlanc, M.C., Gillespie, L.J., Brysting, A.K., Solstad, H., and Harris, J.G. 2007. Flora of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago: Descriptions, Illustrations, Identification, and Information Retrieval. [CD-ROM] NRC Research Press, National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa.
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