genus
Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...
of
flowering plant
Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...
s in the
family
Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...
Caryophyllaceae
Caryophyllaceae, commonly called the pink family or carnation family, is a family (biology), family of flowering plants. It is included in the dicotyledon order Caryophyllales in the APG III system, alongside 33 other families, including Amaranth ...
.Volker Bittrich. 1993. "Caryophyllaceae" In: Klaus Kubitzki. ''The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants''. volume II, pages 206-236. Springer-Verlag: Berlin, Heidelberg Germany. Members of this genus and of some other genera in Caryophyllaceae are commonly called sandworts. They are found only in the north
temperate zone
In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (approximately 23.5° to 66.5° N/S of the Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ra ...
. The genus ''Moehringia'' was first formally named by
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné,#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming o ...
in 1753. It is named after the German naturalist Paul Möhring (1710–1792).
Its
type species
In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the spe ...
is '' Moehringia muscosa''.Index Nominum Genericorum (see External links below) By 1992, there were 31 recognized
species
A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...
.Simone Fior and Per Ola Karis. 2007. "Phylogeny, evolution, and systematics of ''Moehringia'' (Caryophyllaceae) as inferred from molecular and morphological data: a case of homology reassessment." ''Cladistics'' 23(4):362-372. In 2007, Fior and Karis transferred four species from ''Moehringia'' to '' Arenaria'', leaving ''Moehringia'' with 27 species. ''M. fontqueri'', ''M. intricata'', ''M. tejedensis'', and ''M. glochidisperma'' were renamed ''A. funiculata'', ''A. suffruticosa'', ''A. tejedensis'', and ''A. glochidisperma'', respectively.