Monoicous or dioicous. Plants slender to robust. Stems unbranched, or branching near base, with a central strand. Rhizoids basal or cauline, coloured and ornamented. Leaves ovate-lanceolate to narrowly lanceolate; costa single, strong, ending near apex or slightly excurrent; laminal cells smooth, almost quadrate to elongate-rectangular.

Perichaetial leaves undifferentiated. Calyptra small, cucullate. Sporophytes terminal. Setae usually long, slender and flexuose. Capsules clavate to elongate-pyriform, slightly to strongly curved and asymmetrical, with a long apophysis; annulus present; operculum small, convex or short-conical, often apiculate. Peristome diplolepidous; exostome teeth 16; endostome of 16 segments from a basal membrane. Spores small to large.

A small family of five genera; three (Amblyodon P.Beauv., Neomeesia Deguchi and Paludella Brid.) are monotypic, Meesia comprises c. 10 species and Leptobryum five. The latter two genera occur in Australia. The distribution is predominantly cool- to cold-temperate in both hemispheres.

Colonies occur as dense tufts in wet habitats.

Meesiaceae Schimp., Coroll. Bryol. Eur. 82 (1856). Type: Meesia Hedw., nom. cons.

Leptobryum was transferred (Buck & Goffinet, 2000) to Meesiaceae from its traditional position in Bryaceae on the basis of nuclear and chloroplast DNA evidence (Cox & Hedderson, 1998). This placement has been maintained in the most recent classification of mosses (Goffinet et al., 2012).

Brotherus, V.F. (1924). Meeseaceae (sic), Nat. Pflanzenfam. 2nd edn, 10: 443–445.

Buck, W.R. & Goffinet, B. (2000). Morphology and classification of mosses, in Shaw, A.J. & Goffinet, B. (eds) Bryophyte Biology 71–123.

Cox, C.J. & Hedderson, T.A.J. (1998). Phylogenetic relationships among the ciliate arthrodontous mosses: evidence from chloroplast and nuclear DNA sequences. Pl. Syst. Evol. 215: 119–139.

Goffinet, B., Shaw, A.J. & Buck, W.R. (2012), Classification of the Bryophyta. [http://www.eeb.uconn.edu/people/goffinet/Classificationmosses.html]

Norris, D.H., Koponen, T. & Piippo, S. (1999). Bryophyte flora of the Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea. LXVI. Meesiaceae (Musci), with lists of boreal to temperate disjunct, bipolar, and widely spread species in New Guinea. Ann. Bot. Fennici 36: 257–263.

Smith, A.J.E. (1978). Meesiaceae. Moss Flora of Britain and Ireland 451–453.

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.