Genera: ± 13; ± 300, species.
Region: worldwide except Antarctica.
Habitat: disturbed or open sites on bare soil.
BotanyMoss; minute to medium-sized, gregarious to forming open tufts, light to yellow-green, annual to biennial.
Stems: short, erect, simple or with a few branches, central strand present, basal rhizoids few.
Leaves: usually larger and more crowded distally, often comose, reduced proximally, usually contorted when dry, spreading when wet, broadly elliptic to obovate, usually concave, margins plane to somewhat incurved, entire to serrate, sometimes limbate, apex acute to acuminate, rarely somewhat blunt, costa single, percurrent to excurrent; distal and median cells usually irregular-rhombic to hexagonal or rectangular, smooth and rather thin-walled, often lax, weakly chlorophyllose, proximal cells usually longer, oblong to rectangular, sometimes weakly inflated at proximal angles, differentiated alar cells absent. Specialized asexual reproduction absent.
Sexual condition: autoicous, sometimes polygamous, rarely synoicous or paroicous. Perigonia terminal on short basal branches, budlike, paraphyses yellowish and club-shaped. Perichaetia terminal, paraphyses usually absent and filiform when present, perichaetial leaves often somewhat enlarged.
Capsule: stegocarpous or cleistocarpous, immersed to exserted, globose or pyriform to cupulate, sometimes flaring, symmetric and nearly smooth to asymmetric and striate when dry, usually with a neck; exothecial cells thick to thin-walled; stomata restricted to neck, consisting of a slit in a rounded guard cell, superficial or immersed, annulus present or absent, revoluble, revoluble in fragments, or not; operculum present or absent, flat, conic-rounded, to rostrate; peristome double, single, rudimentary, or absent, exostome teeth 16, erect to incurved, papillose-striolate or striate, trabeculate on adaxial surface, endostome segments 16 and opposite the exostome teeth, cilia absent, represented only by the exostome when single; seta terminal, solitary, short-to-elongate, erect to somewhat curved, smooth or rarely papillose; calyptra deciduous or persistent, mitrate to cucullate, smooth, usually long-rostrate and inflated towards the base. Spores spherical or subreniform, strongly ornamented to smooth.
CharactersBroad leaves, large, pale laminal cells, opposite peristomes, and the distinctive stomata.
Annuals or biennials, some perennials.
Few distinctive vegetative features.
Sporophytes are common, although seasonal.
Genera: 15; Aphanorrhegma, Brachymeniopsis, Bryobeckettia, Clavitheca, Cygnicollum, Entosthodon, Ephemerella, Funaria, Funariella, Funariophyscomitrella, Goniomitrium, Loiseaubryum, Nanomitriella, Physcomitrella, Physcomitrellopsis, Physcomitrium, Pyramidula.
Species: 303 species: 200 species in Funaria, 80 in Physcomitrium; Goniomitrium has been recently moved from the
Pottiaceae to the
Funariaceae.