Pilotrichaceae

Diagnosis: Plants mostly medium-sized, sometimes smaller or robust, in mostly lustrous, bright green or less often golden or reddish, dense or lax, mats or tufts; stems creeping, often short, often with eroded leaves, with erect primary branches, mostly complanate-foliate. Leaves sometimes contorted dry or moist, laxly or densely foliate, lateral and dorsal leaves often differentiated in size, shape and symmetry, mostly wide-spreading,, oblong-lanceolate to broadly ovate, gradually to abruptly acute to acuminate, rarely obtuse, asymmetric; margins entire to serrate, plane or narrowly recurved, sometimes bordered by elongate, narrow cells; costa double, often slender, mostly ending at midleaf or below; cells mostly long-hexagonal, the apical ones sometimes shorter than those at midleaf, smooth, thin- or firm-walled, becoming shorter and often colored in 1-2 rows across the insertion. Asexual propagula common in leaf axils. Setae often short, sometimes elongate, typically papillose throughout, rarely smooth throughout, reddish; capsules erect, symetric, cylindric; exostome teeth papillose throughout; endostome with a low basal membrane, segments erect, about as long as the teeth. Calyptra hairy, smooth or roughened at the apex.

Notes: monographed by S. Churchill in an unpublished doctoral dissertation