in botany: A genus of the order of musci, belonging to the cryptogamia class of plants. The anthera is operculated, and placed upon a very small apophysis or articulation; the calyptra villosa; the star of the female is on a distinct individual. There are three species; the most remarkable of which is the commune, or great golden maiden-hair, frequently to be met with in the bogs and wet places of this country. It grows in patches, the stalks erect, generally single and unbranched, from three inches to a foot, or even a yard high. The leaves are numerous, stiff, lanceolate, acute, growing round the stalk without order, and, if viewed with a microscope, appear to have their edges finely serrated. They are of a bright green when young and fresh, but reddish when dried or in decay: the filaments, or peduncles, are of a shining red, or orange colour, from two to four inches long, arising singly from the top of the stalks, and surrounded at their base with a cylindrical tubular vagina, or perichaetium. The anthera, or capsule, is quadrangular, green at first, afterwards yellow, and red when ripe, having an annular pedicel, or apophysis, at its base. The operculum is flat, with a projecting point in the centre; and underneath is a whitish circular membrane, placed in the middle of the capsule's orifice, and sustained there by numerous arched threads, or cilia, connected by one end to the circumference of this membrane, and by the other fastened to the ring of the anthera. The pollen, or, as others term it, the seed, is freed from the anthera or capsule through the space between the cilia. The calyptra is twofold, an internal and external one; both which at first entirely cover and hang over the anthera. The internal one is conical, membranaceous, and smooth; the external one is composed only of tawny hairs, connected into a sort of mat, lacquered at the base, and serving like a roof of thatch to defend the other. Besides the stalks before described, there are commonly some others near at hand, which are destitute both of filaments and capsules, but are terminated with a kind of rofaceous cup, either of a bright red or yellowish colour, composed of leaves of different sizes, the outermost broad, the innermost lanceolate, growing gradually more and more fine and slender to the centre. This cup is looked upon by Linnaeus as the female flower of this moss; but Haller is of opinion, that it is only the gem or origin of a new stalk, which frequently rises from its centre, and this again becomes sometimes proliferous. There are two varieties of this moss: the first has much shorter stalks than the preceding, and often branched; the leaves stiffer, erect, and more crowded; in other respects the same. The other has a stalk scarcely more than half an inch high, terminated with a cluster of linear, erect, rigid leaves, for the most part entire on the edges, and tipped each with a white hair. The filament is about an inch high, and the capsule quadrangular. The female flower, or gem, is of a bright red colour.

The first kind, when it grows long enough for the purpose, is sometimes used in England and Holland to make brooms or brushes. Of the female sort the Lapplanders, when obliged to sleep in desert places, frequently make a speedy and convenient bed. Their manner of doing it is curious: Where this moss grows thick together, they mark out, with a knife, a piece of ground, about two yards square, or of the size of a common blanket; then beginning at one corner, they gently fever the turf from the ground, and as the roots of the moss are closely interwoven and matted together, they by degrees strip off the whole circumcribed turf in one entire piece; afterwards they mark and draw up another piece, exactly corresponding with the first; then, shaking them both with their hands, they lay one upon the ground, with the moss uppermost, instead of a matras, and the other over it, with the moss downwards, instead of a rug; and between them both take a comfortable nap, free from fleas and bugs, and without fear of contagious distempers. It is probable they might take the hint of making such a bed from the bear, a cohabitant of their country, which prepares his winter-quarters with a large collection of this same moss. See Musci, p. 473, and Plate CCCXXI.