Named for the Dutch gardener David Meese (1723–70).

Perennial plants in rather dense caespitose tufts, yellowish green to green or dark green above, brown to blackish below. Lower stems densely matted with rhizoids, occasionally branching; basal portions mostly buried in mud. Leaves decurrent, suberect to squarrose from an erect base, smooth, oval-oblong to lanceolate or lingulate; costa strong, wide at base, ending below apex to short-excurrent; upper laminal cells small, rectangular, somewhat incrassate; basal cells larger, rectangular, hyaline.

Setae long. Capsules elongate-pyriform, curved, with the apophysis equal in size to the theca; operculum small, conical, obtuse; annulus double. Exostome short, usually less than half the height of the endostome, finely papillose; outer plates large; inner lamellae low; endostome processes linear-lanceolate with a hyaline border, keeled and somewhat perforate along the keel, ±smooth, sometimes joined apically; rudimentary cilia occasionally present. Spores large.

A genus of c. 10 species, found in Europe, North and South America and Asia; two species are known from Australia and New Zealand.

Colonies occur as dense tufts in wet boggy habitats, often with Sphagnum.

Meesia Hedw., Sp. Musc. Frond. 173 (1801), nom. cons. Type: Meesia longiseta Hedw., typ. cons.

The only African species (M. kenyae P. de la Varde) was placed in synonymy with Ceratodon purpureus (Hedw.) Brid. (Ditrichaceae) by R.Ochyra, Cryptogamie Bryologie 22: 23–28, 2001.

G.H.Bell & D.G.Catcheside (2012), Australian Mosses Online 43. Meesiaceae. Australian Biological Resources Study, Canberra. Version 13 June 2012. 

First published as: G.H.Bell & D.G.Catcheside (2006), Meesiaceae, Fl. Australia 51: 182–186. Australian Biological Resources Study, Canberra & CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne.