Plants erect in glossy green to golden green wefts, mostly with a metallic reddish cast, to 2 cm high. Leaves concave, ovate to ovate lanceolate with broadly acute apices, to 1.5 mm long, 2.5–4: 1, closely erect spreading to imbricate when moist, little changed upon drying, not plicate. Median laminal cells rhomboidal to elliptic with walls thick (lumen: wall ratio 2–4: 1), longer and narrower near costa, completely smooth, not pitted, to 15 µm wide. Basal and alar cells strongly reddened, isodiametric or nearly so, shorter and broader than median cells. Margins not decurrent, plane to recurved, nearly entire or minutely serrulate at immediate apex. Limbidium not clearly demarcated, unistratose throughout. Costa mostly deep red at base but becoming red-brown to pale brown distally, percurrent or short-excurrent to subpercurrent. Adaxial cells of the costa linear, to 10: 1, strongly pachydermous with lumen: wall ratio 2–3: 1. Axillary hairs 4–5 cells long, to 70 µm, with a short basal brown cell and with all cells thin-walled and of equal lengths. Outer cortical cells in surface view rectangular with parallel lateral walls, about 6–10: 1. Rhizoids coarsely papillose, brown, sparingly branched. Macronematal area inconspicuous, to 30 µm wide; micronemata abundant with micronemata sparingly branched, short, to 15 µm in basal diameter. Stem cross-section round to rounded-pentagonal, with a central strand, with hyaline and leptodermous inner corticals abruptly transitting to a single layer of strongly pachydermous, red-brown outer cortical cells, without a hyaloderm. Gemmae usually present among rhizoids in upper leaf axils, spherical to short-elliptic, yellow to yellow brown or, red-brown, to 150 µm in diameter.
Dioicous with male plants similar to females. Perichaetial leaves to 1.5 mm long, similar to the vegetative leaves. Seta red-brown to brown, smooth, erect but geniculate distally, to 15 mm long. Urn red-brown, to 2.5 mm long, cylindric to pyriform, pendent, neither sulcate nor strumose. Operculum short conic to apiculate. Annulus prominent, revoluble, with inflated and thin-walled cells. Suboral exothecial to 30 µm broad, transversely elongate in up to 4 rows. Exothecial cells at middle of urn rectangular, to 1.8: 1, to 30 pm broad, in regular rows, evenly rather thin-walled. Stomates restricted to neck of capsule, not raised on pustules, round. Exostome yellow brown, to 450 µm long, not at all shouldered, very finely papillose with low dorsal lamellae but rather high ventral lamellae. Endostome segments about as long as the exostome, with basal membrane comprising about 1/2 of total length, and with segments smooth to lightly papillose, narrowly perforated along keel with 1–2 appendiculate to nodose cilia. Calyptra cucullate, mostly shed before capsule maturity. Spores to 15 µm, finely papillose.
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