USNEA, in botany, a genus of mosses, wholly destitute of leaves, and composed only of long slender filaments or stalks, which are usually solid, rigid, and of a cylindric figure. The extremities, or other parts of these, are at times furnished with a sort of orbicular bodies, dry and destitute of use, but seeming to supply the place of flowers. These are hollow, in form of cups, but have no rim. The whole plants are fixed in the manner of mistletoe to the barks of trees. Micheli has given accounts of flowers and seeds in these plants; but Dillenius suspects the accuracy of this observation, and adds, that if there are such, they are too minute to be of any service in the general distinctions of the plants. See Plate CCCXX.
WAND,