Plants in loose to dense tufts, turfs, or mats, green to dark green, brownish green, light green, or yellow-green, often tinged reddish brown or purple. Stems (0.2-)1-3(-4) cm, often branched; rhizoids at base, papillose. Leaves erect-patent, contorted or somewhat crisped, rarely straight when dry, lanceolate, ovate-lanceolate, or triangular-lanceolate, or elliptical to ovate and somewhat concave, margins recurved to near apex, rarely plane, irregularly serrate or smooth distally; costa sub-percurrent to excurrent, sometimes as a long, smooth awn, 1 row of guide cells, two stereid bands, hydroid cells present between guide cells and abaxial stereids; medial laminal cells of somewhat uneven shape and size across leaf, more or less quadrate or short-rectangular, often irregularly angled or rarely rounded, non-pitted. Specialized asexual reproduction absent or as multicellular filamentous propagules with thin walls scattered along the stems or occasionally as rhizome nodules. Sexual condition dioicous; male and female plants about the same size; perigonial leaves ovate, concave, short-acuminate or rarely long-acuminate in well-developed plants; perichaetial leaves convolute-sheathing, abruptly subulate to gradually acuminate. Seta red, purplish, yellow, or yellow-orange, elongate, twisted when dry, erect. Capsule erect to inclined or horizontal, exserted, dark red to reddish or purplish brown, to pale brown, pale yellow or yellow-orange, oblong-ovoid to oblong-cylindric or cylindric, often somewhat asymmetric and deeply furrowed, smooth to strongly sulcate when dry, usually strumose; annulus of 2-3 rows of large, deciduous, revoluble cells; operculum conic to long-conic, straight; peristome single, teeth 16, split nearly to their base into 2 filiform segments free to united at their nodes basally, 5-18 articulations, basal membrane present, finely papillose to spinulose-papillose. Calyptra cucullate. Spores globose, smooth to finely papillose.
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