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Plants moss-like, green to red-green or green-brown. Roots thallus-or ribbon-like. Stems simple to few-branched. Leaves alternate, distichous. Flowers zygomorphic, terminal, at first enveloped in a thin membranous ± sessile spathella. Tepals 2, free, minute, situated one each side of filament base. Stamen 1, ± as long as ovary, attached to pedicel at ovary base. Ovary 2-locular; stigmas 2, simple, appressed to ovary and turned towards anther in bud. Fruit splitting into 2 unequal sections, the larger section persistent. [This description from Aston (1990), where treated as Torrenticola, may not include all taxa currently accepted in Cladopus and may require revision-Editor, 3 November 2020.]
Herbs, perennial. Roots flat, cylindric to flattened, branched. Stems arising laterally from root margins, simple. Sterile stem leaves in a rosette, simple or digitate, with 3-9 segments. Fertile stems to 1 cm tall; leaves densely imbricate, digitate. Flowers solitary, terminal, zygomorphic, pedicellate, enclosed in spathella before anthesis; spathella ovoid, apex nipple-shaped, usually irregularly dehiscent, sometimes by a lateral slit. Tepals 2, at both sides of filament base, narrowly triangular to linear, membranous. Stamen 1, rarely 2, filament curved, anther basifixed, 2-loculed. Ovary 2-loculed. Stigmas 2. Capsule smooth, 2-valved; largest valve persistent.
