Pseudolycopodiella Holub, Folia Geobot. Phytotax.

Øllgaard, Benjamin, Kessler, Michael & Smith, Alan R., 2018, Prodromus of a fern flora for Bolivia. II. Lycopodiaceae, Phytotaxa 334 (3), pp. 255-294 : 291

Pseudolycopodiella Holub, Folia Geobot. Phytotax. 18(4): 441. 1983

= Lycopodium sect. Caroliniana Bruce, Amer. Fern J. 66(4): 136. 1976.

= Lycopodiella sect. Caroliniana (Bruce) B.Øllg., Opera Bot. 92: 174. 1987.

Species of this genus have sporophytes with prostrate, rooting, indeterminate, isophyllous to strongly anisophyllous, horizontally branching shoots, and dorsally arising, erect, simple strobiliferous branches; leaves of strobiliferous branches conform to leaves of prostrate shoots or strongly reduced and distant; sporophylls arranged in alternating whorls of 3–5, (rarely decussate elsewhere), forming 6–10(–12) longitudinal ranks, free, subpeltate, not enclosing the sporangia in cavities at maturity, without veinal mucilage canals; and sporangia isovalvate, reniform, broadly attached to the sporophyll stalk: sporangial epidermis cells with incompletely lignified or incompletely semiannular thickenings. Reported chromosome counts vary: n = 35, 70, 2 n = 115 ( Bruce 1976), n = 68 ( Takamiya & Kurita 1983), n = c. 69 ( Walker 1966). The gametophytes are epiterranean and photosynthetic.

The genus has perhaps 12 species (2 in Bolivia) in tropical and temperate America, Africa, Asia, Australia, and New Caledonia; it is absent from Europe. Most species grow on moist or boggy, sandy soil. The highest diversity and the less derived, isophyllous species are found in South America. A thick spongy cortex in the prostrate shoots seems to have developed independently as an adaptation to marshy or shallowly inundated growth conditions in species in southern Africa, Brazil to Bolivia, and the Guayana Highlands.