Family: Sematophyllaceae

Kingdom: Plantae Rank: Family Parent: Hypnales Status: Valid

Common Names:

  • Sematophyllaceae - English, United States of America

Morphological Description

Diagnosis: Plants small to robust, in often lustrous, soft to stiff, green to yellow-brown but typically golden-green, sometimes reddish, lax or dense mats. Stems creeping or rarely erect, irregularly branched or rarely ± regularly pinnate, sometimes complanate-foliate. Stem and branch leaves mostly similar, occasionally differentiated, often subcomplanate, sometimes homomallous to falcate-secund, narrowly lanceolate to ovate to suborbicular, symmetric, obtuse to acuminate, often concave, not or scarcely decurrent; margins not or rarely bordered, entire to serrate, plane, recurved or reflexed; costa short and double or absent; cells rhomboidal to linear-flexuose, typically long-hexagonal, smooth or papillose, seldom prorulose, mostly firm-walled; alar cells mostly enlarged, usually inflated, colored, occasionally quadrate and not inflated. Setae elongate, smooth or roughened above or rarely throughout, usually reddish; capsules erect to pendent, mostly asymmetric, arcuate or straight, ovoid to cylindric, smooth or rarely with a roughened neck, often constricted below the mouth when dry and empty; annulus usually not differentiated; operculum typically obliquely long-rostrate, rarely conic; peristome typically double, the endostome rarely lacking, exostome teeth typically strongly shouldered and bordered, on the front surface with a zig-zag median line or a median furrow, cross-striolate below, coarsely papillose above, sometimes reduced and papillose or smooth throughout. Calyptra cucullate or rarely mitrate, naked or rarely sparsely hairy, usually smooth, sometimes scabrous above. Spores spherical, often papillose.