Coleochaete is a genus of parenchymatous charophyte green algae in the order Coleochaetales.

[1] They are haploid, reproduce both sexually and asexually, and have true multicellular organisation, with plasmodesmata communicating between adjacent cells.

The plants form flat, sprawling discs on solid surfaces in freshwater streams worldwide, usually as epiphytes on aquatic plants or growing on the surface of stones.

[4] As they show some of the earliest and simplest features of multicellular plant growth, they are ideal model organisms in the field of synthetic biology.

[citation needed] They are easy to culture and techniques that have been used to study Arabidopsis thaliana are now being applied to Coleochaete.