Polytrichum

Accepted species 39 Documented here 10 Family Polytrichaceae

Accepted species 39 in this genus

Every accepted species in the genus is listed. A name links to its page when we hold at least three commercially licensed photographs of it. Where we do not, the row shows how many we actually found, which is usually none.

SpeciesAuthority Usable photographsPage
Polytrichum juniperinum Hedw. 1,655 documented
Polytrichum piliferum Hedw. 909 documented
Polytrichum formosum Hedw. 884 documented
Polytrichum commune Hedw. 749 documented
Polytrichum strictum Menzies ex Brid. 94 documented
Polytrichum ohioense Renauld & Cardot 47 documented
Polytrichum longisetum Sw. ex Brid. 22 documented
Polytrichum subpilosum P.Beauv. 8 documented
Polytrichum pallidisetum Funck 4 documented
Polytrichum perigoniale Michx. 4 documented
Polytrichum × stefureacii Plăm. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum angustifolium Mitt. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum appalachianum L.E.Anderson 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum brachymitrium Müll.Hal. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum breviceps Müll.Hal. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum circinnatulum Müll.Hal. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum cupreum G.Negri 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum densifolium Wilson ex Mitt. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum elegans Welw. & Duby 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum elongatum P.Beauv. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum ericoides Hampe 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum gracilisetum Besch. ex Müll.Hal. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum hyperboreum R.Br. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum jensenii I.Hagen 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum juniperellum Müll.Hal. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum microcephalum Müll.Hal. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum micropyxis Müll.Hal. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum oerstedianum Müll.Hal. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum papillosum Dyachenko 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum polakowskyi Müll.Hal. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum recurvatum Müll.Hal. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum recurvipilum Müll.Hal. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum stolonigerum Müll.Hal. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum swartzii Hartm. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum tonkinense Thér. & R.Henry 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum torquatum (Mitt. ex Osada & G.L.Sm.) N.E.Bell & Hyvönen 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum trachythecium Müll.Hal. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum vaginatum Warnst. 0 below the evidence gate
Polytrichum xanthopilum Wilson ex Mitt. 0 below the evidence gate

Why some species have no pagethe gate

This site is commercial, so it can only publish photographs licensed for commercial use. Roughly three quarters of the photographs on iNaturalist are CC BY-NC, which excludes them. A species needs at least three usable photographs before we will build it a page, because a page with one picture and no traits tells you nothing you could not get from a search result, and generating hundreds of thousands of those is precisely the practice that got the previous version of this site deleted.

So the species above without a link are not errors and they are not omissions. They are real, accepted plants that we cannot yet document to the standard we hold ourselves to, and the count in the photographs column is exactly how far short we fall.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. Accepted names, authorities, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. Photograph counts, restricted to CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA. Retrieved 2026-06-27.