夭命藓科   yao-ming xian ke

by Li Xing-jiang, Si He, and Zhang Da-cheng

 

Plants very tiny, delicate, ephemeral, growing on soil, usually with persistent, green, shiny protonemata spreading around soil surfaces. Stems very short; central strand often absent. Leaves few, the lower leaves short and small, the upper leaves larger and more crowded, ovate-lanceolate to linear-lanceolate, gradually acuminate; margins entire below, serrate above; costa slender, usually weak, obsolete or absent; upper leaf cells narrowly rectangular or irregularly oblong-rhomboidal; basal cells larger, lax, rectangular. Mostly dioicous. Male plants minute, budlike; female plants also very tiny. Setae very short or lacking; capsules immersed in perichaetial leaves, globose to ovoid, without neck or neck poorly developed; stomata superficial or not developed; opercula, annuli, and peristome none; columella usually resorbed at maturity. Calyptrae small, often mitrate, rarely cucullate. Spores large, spherical, yellowish or yellowish brown, often papillose, rarely smooth.