Neckeraceae is a moss family in the order

Hypnales Hypnales is the botanical name of an order of Bryophyta or leafy mosses. This group is sometimes called feather mosses, referring to their freely branched stems. The order includes more than 40 families and more than 4,000 species, making them t ...

. There are about 200 species native to

temperate In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (23.5° to 66.5° N/S of Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ranges throughout t ...

and

tropical regions The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred t ...

. Most grow on rocks, or other plants.

Description

Members of the family are usually large and glossy plants with creeping

stolons In biology, stolons (from Latin '' stolō'', genitive ''stolōnis'' – "branch"), also known as runners, are horizontal connections between organisms. They may be part of the organism, or of its skeleton; typically, animal stolons are external s ...

that bear small leaves and tufts of rhizoids. Stems are generally frondose, but may rarely be dendroid. Leaf cell shape is almost always smooth, short, and firm-walled. Marginal cells are typically quadrate to short-rectangular in few to several rows. The sporophyte features are variable between genera. Species are

epiphytic An epiphyte is an organism that grows on the surface of a plant and derives its moisture and nutrients from the air, rain, water (in marine environments) or from debris accumulating around it. The plants on which epiphytes grow are called phoroph ...

, epilithic, or aquatic.Olsson, S, Buchbender, V, Enroth, J, Huttunen, S, Hedenäs, L & Quandt, D 2009, 'Evolution of the Neckeraceae (Bryophyta): resolving the backbone phylogeny', Systematics and Biodiversity, vol 7, no. 4, pp. 419-432.

Classification

The Neckeraceae were originally placed within the Leucodontales. However, they are now included in the

. The following

genera Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial ...

are recognised in the family Neckeraceae:

References

Moss families {{Bryophyte-stub