Plagiobryum Lindb.

Plants small and delicate, mostly whitish or silvery and suffused below with pink. Stems short, much branched. Leaves mostly imbricate, broadly ovate to cochleariform, variable at apex, thin-walled and delicate, strongly concave, mostly entire, plane or recurved, unbordered, not decurrent, little altered when dry; upper laminal cells rhombic-hexagonal, mostly thin-walled, more oblong and usually shorter below; marginal cells not differentiated. Costa percurrent or ending below the leaf apex, rarely excurrent.

Dioicous. Setae short and cygneous; capsules horizontal to ± pendulous, elongate with a narrow neck, asymmetric and curved, often ± gibbous; annulus revoluble. Exostome teeth yellow-brown, lanceolate, nearly smooth, mostly ± shorter than endostome; endostome ± adherent, with a high membrane and rudimentary cilia. Spores persisting in tetrads until maturity, often with trilete scars, large.

Plagiobryum is a small genus of scattered, predominantly temperate distribution. Ochi (1992) recognised six spp. One endemic species occurs in N.Z. The genus is characterised by very long-necked, slightly gibbous and horizontal to pendulous capsules with endostomal segments usually exceeding the teeth.

Spence & Ramsay (2006) treated one Australian species, P. cellulare, in Plagiobryum.