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Hypnum Ruscifolium, Neck

"Where, through some meadows, soft and green,

Gemm'd with the daisy's silver bloom,

A gentle stream is wandering seen,

'Mid flowering banks of rare perfume;

There you may look beneath the waters

Sweetly gliding on serene,

For one of Beauty's lovely daughters--

Lovely though of humble mien;

And where the stream, in childish glee,

Leaps o'er the rocks with infant pride,

This little moss, in eddying swirl

Of foaming waves, its head doth hide."

Genus HYPNUM, Dill.

The species of the Genus Hypnum in its wider sense all agree in having the peristome double and perfect, the outer of sixteen, strong, lance-shaped, taper-pointed and densely cross-barred teeth; the inner a broad membrane divided to the middle, or about, into sixteen, keeled, yellow segments, distantly cross-barred, entire, or cleft more or less along the keel, the segments generally separated by 1 to 3 filiform divisions (cilia) cross-barred and often bearing tiny spurs on the margin.

The difference in the species will perhaps better be understood by reference to the following synopsis of the sub-genera represented by the species which follow.

Dr. Johnston in speaking of the genus Hypnum said that perhaps it formed one-fourth of the vegetable clothing of Great Britain.

The word hypnum is the Greek ??, an ancient name for some sort of moss supposed to promote sleep.