Region: worldwide except Antarctica; temperate, tropical areas.
Genera: 8; ± 155 species.
BotanyMoss; in small to large cushions; white to pale green; glaucous, grayish or pale-brown.
Stems erect, branching, central strand absent or poorly developed.
Leaves: thick, consisting mostly of an expanded costa, distal part of leaf (limb) linear, ligulate or lanceolate, ± tubulose, spreading from a narrow base (sheath); costa consisting of 2 to several layers of enlarged empty, hyaline, thin-walled, porose cells (leucocysts) enclosing a central layer of small, green cells (chlorocysts); unistratose lamina restricted to leaf base, consisting of very narrow, delicate, hyaline, quadrate to oblong or linear cells.
Sexual condition dioicous, pseudautoicous, or autoicous.
Capsule: erect to inclined, symmetric or asymmetric, often strumose; operculum long-rostrate, often longer than urn; annulus present or absent; peristome teeth 8–16, entire or divided 1/2 their length, articulate; seta terminal, straight; calyptra cucullate or mitrate, smooth, rarely fringed at base. Spores spherical.
Genera: Atractylocarpus, Brothera, Bryohumbertia, Campylopodiella, Campylopus, Cladopodanthus, Dicranodontium, Leucobryum, Microcampylopus, Ochrobryum, Pilopogon, Schistomitrium.
Clades:
Plants, Bryophytae,
Bryophyta, Dicraniidae,
DicranalesClasses: Kingdom 3, K3,
Series 3, R3, Stage 00, S00