Plant to 2 mm high with leaves erect when dry,erect spreading when moist Seta to 5 mm long, erect yellow toyellow brown, Urn including hypophysis to 2 mm long withhypophysis about as long as urn Autoicous with perigoniaappearing as lateraland basal buds, often buried in the soil. Spores to 30 µm, warty papillose.
Gametophytes to 6 mm high but with the stems only 2–4 mm long, in close green to rich green turfs. Leaves homomallous to falcate, mostly inconspicuously distichous but markedly so in vigorously growing sterile plants, to 2.5 mm long, about 4–6: 1, oblong-lanceolate to lanceolate, not at all differentiated into a sheathing base, not keeled. Lamina unistratose with cells smooth throughout. Basal and alar cells shorter but otherwise not differentiated from the median cells. Median laminar cells long rectangular, to 15 µm broad near the costa but gradually more narrow toward the margins, 6–10: 1, in regular rows, thin-walled and not pitted. Apical cells abruptly much shorter than the median cells, often isodiametric or very short rectangular. Ab- and ad-axial cells of costa more narrow but otherwise similar to the adjacent laminal cells. Costa about 1/5–1/8 of leaf base, percurrent in the obtuse to blunt apex. Costa cross-section 2–3 times as broad as thick, formed of three layers of cells with the ab- and ad-axial cell layers resembling the laminal cells but with a single median layer of markedly smaller substereids. Margin plane throughout, entire except at the crenulate to serrulate apex. Axillary hairs 2-celled, clavate and thin, walled, fugaceous, without a basal brown cell. Rhizoids sparingly branched, hyaline to brown, smooth, inserted on abaxial base of costa on more basal leaves of the stem, to 10 µm at insertion. Stem in cross-section flattened-elliptic, with central strand absent or poorly differentiated, with the thin-walled inner cortical cells not markedly different from the outer cells.
Autoicous with perigonia on short bud-like branches near base of plant. Perichaetial leaves only part of the gradual increase in size from the scale-like proximal leaves on the stem. Seta to 5 mm, yellow, straight, smooth. Capsule erect, to 3 mm long of which 1/2 is the long neck, to 5: 1 including the neck, not sulcate or strumose. Annulus not functional, to 2 cells wide with those cells transversely elongate. Operculum and peristome absent. Opercular beak short rostrate, to 1/6 of urn length. Calyptra cucullate, smooth, sheathing up to 1/2 of spore-bearing portion of urn. Exothecial cells not in regular rows, rectangular with oblique end-walls and with the lateral walls not parallel, to 20 µm wide, 1.5–3: 1, rather thin-walled. Stomata numerous on neck, phaneroporous, vertical and almost isodiametric. Spores coarsely warty-papillose, to 35 µm.
![University of California [UC]](http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/common/images/logo_uc_80.png){kind=logo}
