Plants to 140 mm long, in fairly glossy, olive-green to green mats usually with a russet wash in exposed areas. Stems weak, green when young, turning brown with age. Plants prostrate to weakly decumbent, irregularly branched with little differentiation of stems and branches. Leaves usually closely inserted on stem, ovate to ovate lanceolate with bluntly rounded apices, to 1 mm long, about 2: 1, somewhat to not at all falcate, weakly ascending and clasping the stem, little changed wet or dry
Margins plane and entire below but usually with light serrulations at the blunt apex. Median laminal cells of well-developed leaves linear-vermiculose, 4–6: 1, to 6 µm broad, smooth or with weak cuticular striations, rather thick-walled with lumen: wall ratio 3–5: 1. Cells of alar region short rectangular in a small group of inflated cells to 20 µm wide, 2–3: 1, mostly to 4 cells broad and extending about three cells up the margin. Marginal cells, especially in proximal half of leaf, broader and more pellucid than adjacent interior cells. Cells in a large group at leaf apex short rectangular 1.5–4: 1, thick-walled with lumen: wall ratio mostly less than 2: 1. Costa mostly forked from near the base, with both forks ending below the leaf middle. Pseudoparaphyllia broadly ovate and rounded at apex, closely folded over bud, to 300 µm long. Axillary hairs 6–8-celled, of uniform diameter throughout, thin-walled, to 400 µm long, with two of the basal cells short but concolorous, not offset from leaf insertion. Stem cross-section with a strong hyaloderm, a stereome 2–4 cells thick with those thick-walled cells abruptly demarcated from an inner medulla of thin-walled and larger hyaline cells with central strand usually present occasionally indistinct. Rhizoids scarse even on the older prostrate axes, fasciculate at abaxial leaf insertions, to 12 µm at insertion, red-brown, sparingly branched, smooth.
Dioicous. Perichaetia placed on older prostrate stems with the outer bracts short and squarrose but with the inner bracts to 2 mm long, erect and loosely sheathing the base of the seta. Inner perichaetial bracts ecostate to weakly costate, plicate, lanceolate, mostly rather brownish-green, gradually contracted from base to the acuminate apex with no alar differentiation and with margins nearly entire below but coarsely prorate-serrate above and with adjacent upper laminal cells also prorate. Seta to 20 mm long, smooth, erect, red-brown. Urn pale-brown, to 2 mm long, about 1.5: 1, oblong, curved and inclined, not sulcate but lightly strangulate. Exothecial cells moderately thick-walled, not collenchymatous, not in regular rows, to 30 µm broad, mostly elongate hexagonal, 1.5–2: 1, not strongly differentiated near the mouth. Stomata few, short and vertical pored, on lower portion of urn. Operculum conic, to 1/5 as long as urn. Annulus present, not revoluble. Calyptra cucullate and smooth, sheathing only distal half of capsule. Exostome teeth inserted and somewhat united near mouth of urn, to 400 µm long, lanceolate but with a prominent shoulder at about middle, transversely striate, inflexed when dry, pale yellow to yellow, with a well defined zig-zag median commisural line. Endostome segments papillose, nearly as long as exostome, consisting of keeled, narrow segments with 2 cilia, arising from a basal membrane about 1/2 as long as exostome. Spores to 20 µm, finely papillose.
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