Warnstorfia fluitans
(Hedw.) LoeskeAutoicous. Interwoven mats on wet soil or aquatic, yellow-green to dark brown-green. Stem subpinnately and radially branched, usually 20–120 mm long, longer in aquatic forms, with scattered sparse rhizoids, with a distinct central strand. Leaves falcate-secund throughout or ± straight on lower stem and falcate-secund at tips, or rarely straight throughout, narrowly lanceolate, rarely broadly ovate, (1–) 2.5–3.2 (–4.5) mm long, (0.4–) 0.6–0.75 mm wide, concave, not or rarely weakly striolate when dry; apex acuminate, rarely obtuse; costa extending c. 1/2–3/4 leaf length, usually single and unbranched, rarely weak and branched; margins denticulate or rarely nearly entire near apex, without a border; laminal cells in apical half linear, mostly 60–100 (–120) μm long, 5–6 μm wide, smooth or weakly prorate, becoming shorter toward base; alar cells gradually differentiated, often pigmented, moderately inflated, often with c. 6 more strongly inflated cells in extreme angle, extending less than half-way to costa. Seta c. 60–70 mm long, red-brown, fading to straw coloured when dry, smooth. Capsule inclined to horizontal, short-cylindric, strongly curved, c. 2.5–3 mm long. Operculum conic.
Wet ground, drains, creeks and pools of the alpine and subalpine zones in the Victorian Alps. Also WA, NSW, ACT and Tas. New Zealand, New Guinea, Europe, arctic to temperate North America and Asia, Africa, Kerguelen Islands, and southern and Andean South America.
