Abstract
The genus Taxilejeunea (Spruce 1884: 212) Stephani (1889: 262) was originally described as Lejeunea subgenus Taxilejeunea Spruce (1884: 212). Spruce (1884) included 15 species in this subgenus, including the type species Lejeunea pterigonia (Lehm. & Lindenb.) Montagne (1840: 337) [basionym Jungermannia pterigonia Lehm. & Lindenb. in Lehmann (1834: 44)]. Schiffner (1893), when treating the genus Taxilejeunea, included five species namely, Taxilejeunea sulphurea (Lehm. & Lindenb. in Lehmann 1833: 14) Stephani (1890b: 142), T. pterigonia (Lehm. & Lindenb.) Stephani (1890b: 142), T. tenera (Swartz 1788: 143) Stephani (1890a: 98), T. affinis (Lindenb. & Gottsche in Gottsche et al. 1847: 748) Stephani (1890b: 141) and T. lumbricoides (Nees 1830: 40) Stephani (1890b: 141). Since then, many species have been added to the genus (Stephani 1912-1917, 1917-1924, Stotler & Crandall-Stotler 1977, Yano 1984, Fulford & Sharp 1990), especially from South America. All together 218 species names in Taxilejeunea are listed in Index Hepaticarum (Geissler & Bischler 1990, see also Reiner-Drehwald 2005). No detailed account is available on the genus except by Eifrig (1936) who provided a treatment of 26 species from Indomalesia. Recent molecular studies have proved that Taxilejeunea is not a good genus and is nested in Lejeunea (Wilson et al. 2007, Dong et al. 2013, Gradstein 2013, Heinrichs et al. 2013). Earlier, Mizutani (e.g. 1970) showed that various Asian species of Taxilejeunea should be returned to Lejeunea. A review of the species reported or described as Taxilejeunea is very necessary. Söderstöm et al. (2015) gave an account of the validation dates of generic names published by Spruce (1884) as subgenera and revised the publication dates of all species names. In the present paper, we deal only with the Taxilejeunea species recorded from India.