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Oncophorus (Bridel) Bridel, 1826.

Oncophorus is a moss of high elevation streamside and meadow situations. It typically grows best on silt-covered logs, although it may also extend out onto the adjacent soil of the streamside. It is the only acrocarpous moss with crispate and dentate leaves abruptly contracted from a sheathing base, and with smooth and isodiametric median laminal cells.

Key to Oncophorus

Mosses included in this section are acrocarpous, costate plants with the leaf bases well demarcated, closely appressed to, or sheathing, the stem, but with the leaf limb spreading, crispate when dry. The margin of the differentiated limb is bistratose in a 1-2 cell wide band, dentate and often somewhat geminate on that margin. In California, both species of Oncophorus usually have sporophytes. The strongly strumose capsules will allow easy identification.

Species included are in Dicranaceae:
Oncophorus virens (Hedwig) Bridel
Oncophorus wahlenbergii Bridel

A. Leaf broadest near the distal end of the clasping base; margin plane to ascending; apex mostly subulate, bluntly acute .....Oncophorus wahlenbergii
A. Leaf base with more or less parallel sides; margins recurved; leaf apex bluntly obtuse on many leaves .....Oncophorus virens

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