Meteoriaceae

Diagnosis: Plants often in extensive, green to golden, pendent festoons. Stems pendent to creeping, to ca. 30 cm long, the branches short, mostly < 1 cm long, rarely the branch apices becoming flagellate. Stem leaves erect to erect-spreading from a clasping base, narrowly to broadly ovate, ca. 2 mm long, abruptly acuminate, the acumen flexuose and often piliferous, broadly auriculate, the auricles ca. 30-40% of the leaf base (excluding the acumen); margins subentire to serrulate throughout; costa single, ending near midleaf; cells linear, smooth, usually not or scarcely porose but becoming obviously so toward the insertion; alar cells scarcely differentiated to fairly obvious in small, excavate groups, subquadrate to short-rectangular, somewhat porose. Branch leaves densely disposed, wide-spreading to squarrose-recurved, sometimes somewhat contorted when dry, mostly ovate, 0.85-2.2 mm long, short- to long-acuminate, sometimes piliferous, the base mostly cordate, slightly clasping; margins subentire, denticulate or serrulate throughout; costa ending near midleaf or to ca. 3/4 the leaf length; cells fusiform to linear-flexuose, smooth, sometimes ± porose, becoming rectangular and porose toward the insertion; alar cells indistinct to obvious in small, well marked groups, subquadrate, sometimes slightly porose. Setae ca. 3 mm long, straight or curved; capsules short-exerted, erect, long-cylindric, 2-4 mm long; peristome yellow, scarcely bordered, sparsely papillose below, densely papillose-spiculose above. Calyptra erect-pilose, the hairs 1-3(4) seriate. Spores bluntly low papillose, 14-23 µm diameter.

Distribution: Florida; Mexico; Central America; Caribbean, Western and Northern South America, Brazil

Ecology: Growing on tree trunks and rocks, and pendent from branches and leaves, in humid forest, from near sea level to ca. 2700 m.

Basionym: Hypnum patulum Hedw.

Basionym Citation: Species Muscorum Frondosorum 279. pl. 73, in part. 1801.

Type Locality: Jamaica

Type Collection: Swartz, s.n.

Types Deposited at: Holotype: G; Isotypes: H-SOL; NY

Other Published Figures: W. R. Buck. 1998. Pleurocarpous mosses of the West Indies. Plate 99 (10-18); M. G. Manuel. 1977. J. Hattori Bot. Lab. 43: 107-126. fig. 8.