Morphology and taxonomy of leaf papillae and mammillae in Pottiaceae of China

Abstract Both papillae and mammillae are important structural characteristics for Pottiaceae classification, but these characters are diverse and their nomenclature is confused, hindering the classification of Pottiaceae. So, we selected representative species that cover all types of papillae and mammillae of Chinese Pottiaceae and observed and compared differences between them using light and scanning electronic microscopy. We corrected the chaotic descriptions of papillae of representative species, and have provided a uniform set of terms (“simple”, “forked”, “branched”, and “pedicellate”) to describe the shapes of papillae. In addition, we described how to quickly and accurately use papillae and mammillae to classify representative species in Chinese Pottiaceae.