page_title: Selaginella
hierarchical_section_title: Selaginella
context_page_description: Selaginella is the sole genus of vascular plants in the family Selaginellaceae, the spikemosses or lesser clubmosses.
  This family is distinguished from Lycopodiaceae by having scale-leaves bearing a ligule and by having spores of two types. They are sometimes included in an informal paraphyletic group called the "fern allies". S. moellendorffii is an important model organism. Its genome has been sequenced by the United States Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute. The name Selaginella was erected by Palisot de Beauvois solely for the species Selaginella selaginoides, which turns out to be a clade that is sister to all other Selaginellas, so any definitive subdivision of the species into separate genera leaves two taxa in Selaginella, with the hundreds of other species in new or resurrected genera.
  Selaginella occurs mostly in the tropical regions of the world, with a handful of species to be found in the arctic-alpine zones of both hemispheres.
context_section_description: Selaginella is the sole genus of vascular plants in the family Selaginellaceae, the spikemosses or lesser clubmosses.
  This family is distinguished from Lycopodiaceae (the clubmosses) by having scale-leaves bearing a ligule and by having spores of two types.  They are sometimes included in an informal paraphyletic group called the "fern allies". S. moellendorffii is an important model organism. Its genome has been sequenced by the United States Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute. The name Selaginella was erected by Palisot de Beauvois solely for the species Selaginella selaginoides, which turns out (with the closely related Selaginella deflexa) to be a clade that is sister to all other Selaginellas, so any definitive subdivision of the species into separate genera leaves two taxa in Selaginella, with the hundreds of other species in new or resurrected genera.
  Selaginella occurs mostly in the tropical regions of the world, with a handful of species to be found in the arctic-alpine zones of both hemispheres.
caption: Curled up Selaginella tamariscina
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