1. Splachnum Hedw. 壶藓属 hu xian shu
Sp. Musc. Frond. 51. 1801.
Plants small to rather robust, deeply green to yellowish green, gregarious, in loose or dense tufts. Stems usually soft, but generally erect, sparsely foliate, simple or branched, with dense reddish brown rhizoids at base. Leaves soft, somewhat flexuous-contorted when dry, lower stem leaves smaller, reddish, upper stem leaves larger and crowded, usually differentiated from the lower leaves, obovate, often constricted at base, broader at middle, acute or acuminate at apex; margins plane, entire or serrate; costa ending in or below leaf apex; leaf cells lax, pale, smooth, thin-walled. Autoicous or dioicous. Perigonia large, cupulate. Perichaetial leaves scarcely differentiated from stem leaves. Setae elongate, slender, erect; capsules small, with subcylindrical urns, brownish, apophyses inflated, much broader than the urns, delicate, globose, pyriform or turbinate, becoming skirtlike or umbrellalike when mature, reddish purple or yellowish; opercula convex, usually umbonate or bluntly apiculate; annuli lacking; columella exserted outside capsule mouth when operculum falling; peristome teeth in pairs, lanceolate, united at base, reflexed when dry, inflexed when moist, densely and minutely papillose. Calyptrae small, conic-mitrate, split on one side. Spores 8–12 µm in diameter, yellowish, smooth.