Plants: in loose or dense tufts, green, yellowish, or sometimes brownish. Stems: 0.5–3(–6) cm; sparsely to strongly radiculose. Stem: leaves oblong-lanceolate to obovate; margins toothed to entire; apex obtuse, blunt, acute, or acuminate; costa ending well before apex to excurrent; proximal laminal cells long; distal cells oblong-hexagonal. Sexual: condition autoicous, often dioicous, rarely synoicous. Seta: 0.6–4 cm, flexuose or twisted. Capsule: not cleistocarpous, brown, ovoid, oblong-cylindric, pyriform, or conic; hypophysis usually same color as urn, short to elongate, narrower than or occasionally as wide as urn; annulus present, not strongly differentiated; operculum flat, convex, conic, or hemispheric; peristome inserted at or below mouth, prostome absent (present in T. lingulata); exostome teeth 8 or 16, sometimes connate in pairs, rarely split, erect or reflexed, of 2 layers of cells. Calyptra: mitrate, short, constricted at base. Spores: 9–48 µm, smooth, slightly roughened, or papillose. Nearly worldwide, tropical to subarctic regions.
Species 45 (6 in the flora). Tayloria is the only genus of the family to include both anemophilous and entomophilous taxa; it is also the most polymorphic morphologically. All North American species of Tayloria are anemophilous and none are coprophilous, although the plants often grow on nutrient-enriched substrates. The hypophysis of sporophytes of Tayloria is usually tapered and constricted when dry; the stem leaves are erect to wide-spreading and imbricate to somewhat contorted when dry; and the capsules are erect to suberect or slightly asymmetric.