Dioicous. Asexual reproduction by fragile shoot apices detaching as comose clusters of apical leaves. Loose to compact tufts or turves. Leaves terete-foliate, monomorphic, erecto-patent to curved outwards when moist, erect to appressed when dry; apex acute, acuminate or rounded, sometimes cucullate, often with a hyaline and straight or reflexed hairpoint; costa percurrent to long-excurrent, usually 1/3–3/4 leaf width at base, rarely narrower; margins entire or denticulate near apex, plane, sometimes with a short border of hyaline cells near base above the alar cells; laminal cells in apical half isodiametric, elliptic, rhomboidal, rectangular or short-linear, chlorophyllose, not to conspicuously pitted; basal laminal cells similar in shape to cells in apical half or more elongate, completely hyaline or chlorophyllose toward costa; alar cells well to poorly-differentiated, extending to costa, hyaline or walls pigmented brown, orange or red, thin-walled and inflated or thick-walled. Acrocarpous. Seta cygneous. Calyptra cucullate, glabrous, usually fringed at base. Capsules exserted, sulcate. Peristome single, of 16 teeth, split in apical half to split to base.

Cosmopolitan and containing around 160 species (Klazenga 2012); eight species in Victoria.

Campylopus has been subdivided into three subgenera based on sporophytic characters (Frahm 1983), with subgenera Campylopus and Thysanomitrion (Schwägr.) Kindb. occurring in Australia. In subgenus Campylopus the peristome is orange at the base, becoming colourless toward the apex and the teeth are asymmetrically split in the distal half to two-thirds. In Thysanomitrion the peristome is colourless throughout and the teeth are split to the base into two filiform segments of almost equal width (Klazenga 2012). These subgenera do not correspond to genetic lineages in molecular phylogenies of chloroplast and nuclear sequence data (Stech 2004) and are an impractical classification for Australian Campylopus given that sporophytes are unknown or are frequently absent in some Australian species.

Stipa tuckeri