Syntrichia princeps(De Not.) Mitt.

brown screw-mosstortula moss

WFO wfo-0001191359 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Syntrichia princeps, photographed by Randal
fig. a Randal, CC0 1.0 / 2022-01-21 / obs. 176716223

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 99 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -1.9 °C 2.8 °C 6.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 17.8 °C 23.3 °C 33.0 °C
Annual rainfall 475 mm 1,178 mm 2,267 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 4 mm 92 mm 238 mm

It is found where winters bring light 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 99 research-grade observations of Syntrichia princeps 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 Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.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 33 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.

  • Barbula chrysopila Müll.Hal.
  • Barbula megalocarpa Kindb.
  • Barbula mollis Bruch & Schimp. ex Müll.Hal.
  • Barbula muelleri Bruch & Schimp.
  • Barbula princeps (De Not.) Müll.Hal.
  • Barbula princeps var. brachycarpa (De Not.) Grav.
  • Barbula pseudoantarctica Müll.Hal.
  • Barbula semirubra Müll.Hal.
  • Grimmia muelleri Bruch & Schimp. ex Unger & Kotschy
  • Syntrichia echinata (Schiffn.) Herrnst. & Ben-Sasson
  • Syntrichia mollis (Bruch & Schimp. ex Müll.Hal.) R.H.Zander
  • Syntrichia princeps var. brachycarpa (De Not.) R.H.Zander
  • Syntrichia princeps var. echinata (Schiffn.) R.H.Zander
  • Syntrichia princeps var. parnassica (Schiffn.) Podp.
  • Syntrichia ruralis var. spiralis (Herzog) R.H.Zander
  • Tortula chrysopila (Müll.Hal.) Paris
  • Tortula echinata Schiffn.
  • Tortula megalocarpa (Kindb.) Broth.
  • Tortula mollis (Bruch & Schimp. ex Müll.Hal.) Broth.
  • Tortula muelleri Hook.f. & Wilson
  • Tortula muelleri var. parnassica Schiffn.
  • Tortula princeps De Not.
  • Tortula princeps subsp. echinata (Schiffn.) W.A.Kramer
  • Tortula princeps subsp. parnassica (Schiffn.) W.A.Kramer

and 9 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.