Plant Guide > Mosses and Lichens > Mosses > Genus Ditrichum

Genus Ditrichum

Genus DitrichumGenus DITRICHUM, Timm, (1788) LEPTOTRICHUM, Hampe, (1842)

The species of this genus are smooth and glossy plants growing in pale yellow-green tufts on soil or on rocks. The plants are dwarf, or tall and slender with lance-shaped, long-pointed leaves, and oval or cylindrical, erect spore-cases on long and straight, rarely flexuous, pedicels.

The peristome has a compound annulus, and a single row of purple teeth cleft to the base into two slender, cross-barred segments, which have suggested the name of the genus.

The generic name Leptotrichum, used by some for the genus, from the Greek for; narrow, and; a hair, has been shown by Hampe to be untenable, having previously been given to a genus of fungi. It has been replaced by Ditrichum, from the Greek for; two, and; a hair. This name has also the right of priority.

There are seventy-two species in all, seventeen in North America.










Ditrichum Pallidum Moss