Campylopus fragilis(Brid.) Bruch & Schimp.

fragile campylopus moss

WFO wfo-0001179496 Accepted WFO 2026-06 3 photographs CC0

Plate 1 figs. a–c · 1 observation

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 1 time, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Campylopus fragilis, photographed by Jonathan Hughes
fig. a Jonathan Hughes, CC0 1.0 / 2022-04-12 / obs. 187791490

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Where it actually grows measured, from 39 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -8.7 °C -0.1 °C 5.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 14.3 °C 20.6 °C 23.1 °C
Annual rainfall 697 mm 1,900 mm 3,794 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 91 mm 220 mm 528 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 39 research-grade observations of Campylopus fragilis that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 57 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Bryum fragile (Brid.) Dicks.
  • Campylopus akagiensis Broth. & Yasuda
  • Campylopus albescens (Müll.Hal.) A.Jaeger
  • Campylopus alpicola (Müll.Hal.) A.Jaeger
  • Campylopus boswellii (Müll.Hal.) Paris
  • Campylopus boswellii var. capitulatus E.B.Bartram
  • Campylopus celebesicus Cardot
  • Campylopus citrescens Stirt.
  • Campylopus crispifolius E.B.Bartram
  • Campylopus densus Bruch & Schimp.
  • Campylopus densus var. fragilis (Brid.) Wilson
  • Campylopus fimbriatus Mitt.
  • Campylopus flexuosus var. fragilis (Brid.) Steud.
  • Campylopus fragiliformis J.-P.Frahm
  • Campylopus fragilis f. densus (Bruch & Schimp.) Mönk.
  • Campylopus fragilis f. elatior Lorentz
  • Campylopus fragilis f. submersus (J.B.Jack ex Limpr.) Margad.
  • Campylopus fragilis var. alpicola (Müll.Hal.) Wijk & Margad.
  • Campylopus fragilis var. brunnescens H.Winter
  • Campylopus fragilis var. densus (Bruch & Schimp.) A.W.H.Walther & Molendo
  • Campylopus fragilis var. gracilis Schiffn.
  • Campylopus goughii (Mitt.) A.Jaeger
  • Campylopus laetevirens (Müll.Hal.) A.Jaeger
  • Campylopus luetzelburgii Herzog ex J.-P.Frahm

and 33 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite. It has no native range either: Kew's checklist does not cover this taxon.