E-Flora BC: Electronic Atlas of the Flora of British Columbia

Species description:
Species named in honour of T. Nuttall, an important American botanist of the early 19th century.

Reproduction:
Sporophytes frequent, maturing in spring, suberect, long-cylindric, and red-brown when mature.

Distinguishing characteristics:
The usually slender shoots and branches, the glossy, pale yellow-green colour, the frequent branching, the sub­erect cylindric sporangia and the usually epiphytic habitat distinguish this species.

Habit:
Forming bright glossy, yellow-green strands or mats closely or loosely affixed to substratum, usually densely and regularly short branched and the branches coiling upward from the substratum when dry. Sometimes pendent and weakly branched.

Similar Species:
See notes under Homalothecium aeneum. H. pinnatifidum, a species of rock and among grasses is usually very regularly pinnate and is not firmly attached to the substratum; sometimes the apical portion of the plant, including its branches, coils upward when dry. In H. nuttallii the main shoot is affixed to the substratum, thus the branches curl. H. nevadense, a species of the interior, is confined to rock surfaces, and is larger and forms dense turf-like masses of congested branches; H. nuttallii is unknown from the interior.