Plants olive-green to green, to 1 cm high, mostly with more than 10 pairs of leaves which coil at apices when dry. Leaves, when moist, spreading from stem at about a 45 degree angle, to 2.5 mm long, 4–5: 1, ligulate-lanceolate, abruptly contracted to a mucronate apex. Vaginant lamina about 4: 1, extending about 1/2 of leaf, the two sides converging at an acute angle, usually homostichous. Dorsal lamina rounded and often undulate at base, not decurrent. Median cells of apical and dorsal lamina to 8 µm broad, high mammillose with walls obscure, thin-walled, isodiametric-hexagonal, with angular lumens and no corner thickenings. Cells of vaginant lamina mammillose only on outer surface, smooth on interior face, markedly more clear than those of apical lamina. Juxtacostal cells at base of vaginant lamina short rectangular and transparent in a single, somewhat broken row. Costa to 35 µm broad at base, somewhat flexuose above, tapering and short excurrent in the mucronate apex. Margin regularly crenulate throughout and very high crenate on vaginant lamina. Marginal cells in 1–3 rows somewhat lighter and less mammillose than interior laminal cells. Stem with small central strand and with thin-walled inner cortical cells abruptly differentiated from the 2–3 layers of smaller, thick-walled outer corticals; lateral cells of outer cortex not differentiated. Axillary hyaline nodules absent. Axillary hairs to 300 µm long, about 10-celled, without basal brown cell.
Dioicous. Perichaetia terminal with seta to 12 mm, orange-brown, straight, smooth. Urn 1–1.5 mm long, oblong and symmetrical, about 2: 1. Operculum conic, about 1/2 as long as urn. Peristome reddish-brown, to 500 µm long, lightly papillose below, spirally ridged above. Exothecial cells quadrate with angular lumens, rather thick-walled with lumen/wall ratio about 4:1, to 12 µm wide.
![University of California [UC]](http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/common/images/logo_uc_80.png){kind=logo}
