Sematophyllaceae

Diagnosis: Plants medium-sized, golden-green to yellow-brown, lax, often extensive mats. Stems to ca. 3 cm long, reddish, the branches usually short, obscurely complanate-foliate. Stem and branch leaves erect-spreading, broadly ovate-lanceolate, 0.75-1 mm long, acute, deeply concave; margins subentire to serrulate throughout, plane or occasionally recurved; cells linear, unipapillose in upper 2/3 or leaf, thin-walled, becoming rhombic toward the apex, becoming thicker-walled and porose toward the insertion, the papillae over most but not all cells; alar cells lightly colored, 2-3 at each basal angle. Setae elongate, ca. 0.8-1 mm long; capsules ovoid-cylindric, 0.7-0.9 mm long. Spores 12-15 µm diameter.

Distribution: Caribbean; Peru, Brazil, the Guianas; west tropical Africa

Ecology: Mostly growing on old wood, sometimes on soil, in fairly open mesic forest and stream banks, from near sea level to 600 m.

Basionym: Rhaphidostegium subdemissum Schimp. ex Besch.

Basionym Citation: Annales des Sciences Naturelles; Botanique, sér. 6, 3: 250. 1876.

Other Published Figures: W. R. Buck. 1998. Pleurocarpous mosses of the West Indies. Plate 140 (1-7).