FIGURE 3 in A special issue of Phytotaxa dedicated to Bryophytes: The closest living relatives of early land plants

FIGURE 3. Sphagnum pulchrum (Lindberg 1880: 25) Warnstorf (1900: 42), Alaska (Photo: Blanka Shaw). Sphagnum comprises a speciose clade of mosses that dominates many wetland ecosystems, especially in the boreal zone of the Northern Hemisphere (Shaw et al. 2003). In particular, Sphagnum is an important and conspicuous component in peatlands, which perform a significant global function in regulating the Earth's atmospheric chemistry as well as providing valuable economic commodities (Rochefort 2000). Sphagnum holds an interesting position amongst mosses, with Cox et al. (2004) indicating that Sphagnum and Takakia form a clade sister to all remaining mosses.