feather-moss, in botany: A genus of the natural order of musci, belonging to the cryptogamia class of plants. The antherae is operculate, or covered with a lid; the calyptra smooth; the filament lateral, and rising out of a perichaetium, or tuft of leaflets different from the other leaves of the plant. There are 46 species, all of them natives of Great Britain; none of them, however, have any remarkable property, except the proliferum and parietinum. The first is of a very singular structure, one shoot growing out from the centre of another; the veil is yellow and shining; the lid with a kind of long bill; the leaves not shining; sometimes of a yellowish, and sometimes of a deep green. This moss covers the surface of the earth in the thickest shades, through which the sun never shines, and where no other plant can grow. The second habit shoots nearly flat and winged, undivided for a considerable length, and the leaves shining; but the old shoots do not branch into new ones as in the preceding species. It grows in woods and shady places; and, as well as the former, is used for filling up the chinks in wooden houses.