Anomobryum, a genus of 47 species, is found throughout the world. The genus is based on a single morphological feature: plants with julaceous to imbricate leaves. The most common species in the genus, A. julaceum, also has strikingly thick-walled, linear-vermicular upper leaf cells and broadly obtuse leaves, however, other species of Anomobryum are more pedestrian with firm-walled, rhomboidal-hexagonal upper leaf cells and broadly acute leaves. Sporophytically the genus is wildly variable. Some species have fully formed, perfect peristomes and others have the exostome or endostome variously reduced or rudimentary (see Shaw & Fife 1984). The genus is generally recognized by European taxonomists (Koponen et al. 1977, Smith 1978, Corley et al. 1981, Preston 1984, Casas 1991, Cortini Pedrotti 1992, Nyholm 1993). Crum and Anderson (1981), however, placed it within the genus Pohlia, while Ochi (1972, 1980, 1992, 1994) has consistently treated it as a subgroup of Bryum. Although Shaw (1982) and Shaw and Fife (1984) recognized Anomobryum at the generic level, their views considered the genus only from the perspective of its relationship with Pohlia and not its relationship to Bryum. In a restricted sense there are a number of species centered around A. julaceum that seem to be generically distinct from Bryum. However, when the genus is expanded beyond this very narrow concept it merges imperceivably into Bryum.