Plants in rather dense mats to wefts, green to yellowish green. Stems prostrate to ascending, to 15 cm long, irregularly to pinnately branched with branches mostly weakly ascending. Leaves loosely imbricate when dry but erect spreading when moist, not at all falcate secund, to 2 mm long, 2–3: 1, deltoid to broadly ovate-lanceolate, somewhat concave and plicate, with a moderately well-defined, often twisted acumen. Branch leaves smaller and narrower than the stem leaves. Margins plane, decurrent, serrulate below but serrate near apices. Median cells smooth, to 8 µm wide, linear, about 10: 1, rather thick-walled, not pitted. Cells enlarged, rectangular, to 15 µm wide, in 2–3 rows across the entire base. Apical cells elongated, not differentiated. Costa extending 2/3–3/4, usually with an abaxial spine on at least some of the branch leaves. Pseudoparaphyllia deltoid to orbicular, strongly overarching the bud. Axillary hairs of 3 similar cells, to 50 µm with no basal brown cells, not offset from leaf insertion. Rhizoids red-brown, 10–12 µm, smooth, scattered in fascicles on ventral portion of prostrate stem.
Dioicous with male plants somewhat smaller than females. Perichaetial bracts to 1.8 µm, costate, abruptly acuminate from a ligulate-lanceolate base with the acumens loosely spreading; cells uniformly long and straight to 20: 1. Seta brown to red-brown, straight, papillose throughout, to 3 cm long. Capsule brown, inclined to horizontal, strangulate when dry. Urn to 2.5 mm, oblong and asymmetric, to 2: 1. Exothecial cells mostly not in regular vertical rows, to 20 µm wide, mostly 2: 1, with thick, red-brown walls and with stomata restricted to neck. Operculum bluntly conic, about 1/3 as long as urn. Annulus differentiated, not revoluble. Exostome to 400 µm long, horizontally striate below, papillose above, red-brown. Endostome segments low papillose, open on keel, about as long as exostome with basal membrane about equal in length to the segments. Cilia 2–3, nodose to appendiculate. Spores finely papillose, to 15 µm.