虾藓科

Gao Chien

Plants small to medium-sized, slender, light-green or golden, often shiny, gregarious or in loose tufts. Stems stiffly erect and somewhat twisted, simple or forked. Leaves crowded, appressed and overlapping in 2 rows, keeled-conduplicate, oblong-lanceolate and usually blunt below, becoming abruptly apiculate and filiform-tipped above, the uppermost and perichaetial leaves elongate and gradually subulate-awned; costa ending near the apex or, in the upper leaves, disappearing in the awn, bearing at back a single, narrow lamella a few cells high; cells smooth and firm, linear in the subula, upper cells subquadrate, shortly and irregularly rhomboidal or oblong, becoming much narrower and longer toward the margins and base, shortly rectangular at the insertion, not differentiated at the basal angles. Dioicous. Perichaetial leaves elongate and gradually long-subulate. Setae short, erect or somewhat sinuose; capsules immersed, subglobose, symmetric, erect or more or less inclined, smooth; operculum remaining attached to the columella for some time after dehiscence, shortly and obliquely rostrate; annuli none; peristome absent. Calyptrae cucullate. Spores spherical.

The family consists of a single genus, Bryoxiphium Mitt.

Lower Taxon

• Bryoxiphium Mitt.