Dicranum majus (dicranum moss)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Dicranum majus, photographed by Andrew Melton — fig. a Andrew Melton, CC BY 4.0 / 2019-10-24 / obs. 55038126

Dicranum majus, photographed by Jerry Lanfear — fig. c Jerry Lanfear, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 41304139

Dicranum majus, photographed by Helen Waterman — fig. d Helen Waterman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 113199828

Dicranum majus, photographed by Young Jun Lee — fig. e Young Jun Lee, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185369792

Dicranum majus, photographed by Jonathan Hughes — fig. f Jonathan Hughes, CC0 1.0 / obs. 149179226

Dicranum majus, photographed by Michael D. Pirie — fig. h Michael D. Pirie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 106652952

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 300 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	-10.3 °C	1.0 °C	4.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	15.1 °C	18.0 °C	22.1 °C
Annual rainfall	662 mm	1,389 mm	3,646 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	104 mm	257 mm	439 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 300 research-grade observations of Dicranum majus 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 17 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.

Dicranodon scoparium var. majus (Turner) Béhéré
Dicranum delavayi Besch.
Dicranum majus f. bulbiferum Schiffn. ex Warnst.
Dicranum majus f. condensatum (I.Hagen) C.E.O.Jensen
Dicranum majus f. gracile C.E.O.Jensen
Dicranum majus f. humile Milde ex J.J.Amann
Dicranum majus f. orthophyllum (A.Braun ex Milde) Mönk.
Dicranum majus f. orthophyllum (A.Braun ex Milde) E.A.Delamare, Renauld & Cardot
Dicranum majus f. undulascens (Kindb.) Podp.
Dicranum majus var. condensatum I.Hagen
Dicranum majus var. minus Bruch & Schimp.
Dicranum majus var. subundulatum Warnst.
Dicranum majus var. undulascens Kindb.
Dicranum polysetum Brid.
Dicranum scoparium var. latifolium J.Kickx f.
Dicranum scoparium var. majus (Turner) Wahlenb.
Dicranum takakii Sakurai

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
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.