Meesia Hedw.

Plants medium-sized to robust, green, yellow-green, brown or blackish, dull, in loose or dense turves. Stems densely beset with papillose, chocolate brown or nearly black rhizoids, sparsely leaved, nearly simple or branched. Leaves erect or loosely spreading, not or scarcely larger near stem apex, ovate-lanceolate, lingulate, or broadly lanceolate, rounded or acute, mostly entire, variably decurrent; upper laminal cells mostly oblong-rectangular, small and smooth, becoming elongate and pellucid below. Costa failing below the leaf apex.

Autoicous or dioicous. Setae very long; capsules suberect, narrowly-pyriform, asymmetric, bent (sometimes abruptly) at base of the urn, with a clearly defined neck ± equal to the urn; stomata restricted to upper neck, large and superficial; annulus poorly differentiated. Exostome teeth short, often fragile, truncate, indistinctly cross-striolate and fused at base; endostomal segments narrowly linear, 2–4 times the teeth in length and often fused apically by lateral projections; cilia short or rudimentary, or ± the length of the segments and reduced to a delicate chain of fragments. Calyptra cucullate and smooth.

A genus of <10 species, occurring predominantly in the northern hemisphere, but with one species in N.Z. The genus is represented by two species in eastern mainland Australia (Bell & Catcheside 2006) and also occurs in southern South America.

Meesia novae-zealandiae: The type of M. novae-zealandiae Dixon & Sainsbury is referable to Philonotis pyriformis.

Meesia triquetra: Eddy (1996, p. 260) suggested that this species occurs in N.Z., but it seems that he did not see material from this country; the source of his second-hand record is not known. Meesia triquetra is widespread in the northern hemisphere. It is recorded from Malesia by Eddy and from mainland Australia (N.S.W., Vic., and A.C.T.) by Bell & Catcheside (2006). Meesia triquetra has clearly three-ranked and strongly squarrose leaves. It is not considered further here.