Fires produce habitat destruction and worsen land degradation in ecosystems. Bryophytes are essential elements of Macaronesian laurel forests and because of their sensitivity to environmental changes, they serve as helpful disturbance indicators. In the best-preserved laurel forest from the Canaries (Garajonay National Park), we examined how species richness and composition of bryophytes changed in a fire chronosequence (5-57 years), comparing the results between burnt areas with other adjacent unburnt areas in which sample stands were located. At each plot, epiphyte, terricolous, and saxicolous bryophytes were taken, and the effects of time since fire, environmental factors and forest structural drivers were examined. Our findings suggest that there is no common pattern of post-fire recolonization and that climate and forest structure are the most significant factors. The results deepen our understanding of the compositional trends in communities like mosses and liverworts, which have high dispersal and strong dependence on microclimates