Dawsonia (plant) lamella – chains of small cells on the upper surface of the leaves analogous to the mesophyll cells of vascular plant leaves. They increase the surface area of cell walls available for CO uptake, while at the same time maintaining layers of moist air between lamellae, reducing water loss. Lamella margins have a surface wax layer which prevents water from flooding into the interlamellar spaces. Dawsonia (plant) Dawsonia is a genus of acrocarpous mosses. "Dawsonia", along with other members of the order Polytrichales, are taller than most mosses and have thicker leaves. Their sporophytes have conducting systems analogous to those
Plant life-form or tree. Conversely, unrelated species may share a life-form through convergent evolution. While taxonomic classification is concerned with the production of natural classifications (being natural understood either in philosophical basis for pre-evolutionary thinking, or phylogenetically as non-polyphyletic), plant-life form classifications uses other criteria than naturalness, like morphology, physiology and ecology. "Life-form" and "growth-form" are essentially synonymous concepts, despite attempts to restrict the meaning of growth-form to types differing in shoot architecture. Most life form schemes are concerned with vascular plants only. "Plant construction types" may be used in a broader sense to encompass "planktophytes", "benthophytes" (mainly algae) and terrestrial plants.