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Taxonomic groups and ecoregions shape the “lenses” through which biodiversity is assessed and conserved. A historical bias toward vertebrates and vascular plants in the northern hemisphere underpins how global patterns of biodiversity in terrestrial ecosystems are perceived. Here, we focus on the hitherto overlooked non‐vascular flora (liverworts and mosses) in the remote sub‐Antarctic Magellanic ecoregion of southwestern South America. We report that: (1) this ecoregion hosts outstanding non‐vascular floristic richness, with > 5% of the world's bryophytes on < 0.01 % of the Earth's land surface; (2) species richness patterns for vascular and non‐vascular plants are inverted across 25 degrees of latitude in Chile; and (3) while vascular plants are 20 times more abundant than non‐vascular plants globally and in tropical South America, non‐vascular plants are dominant in the sub‐Antarctic Magellanic …