Plants small, in dense to deep tufts, turfs or swollen cushions, tufa-forming, bright to dark blue-green distally and pale green to yellowish brown proximally or sometimes throughout, rarely rufous; frequently bleached or whitened and indurated with encrusted lime. Stems slender, branching irregularly, densely foliate in whorls at successive innovations; transverse section rounded-pentagonal with an irregularly inflated or enlarged hyalodermis and weakly developed sclerodermis; central strand absent; weakly radiculose, rarely strongly so; axillary hairs of 5-10 cells, hyaline throughout. Leaves appressed and scarcely incurved-contorted when dry, erect-spreading when moist, oblong to mostly linear-lanceolate or linear-subulate, base undifferentiated in shape to occasionally broadened-oblong; margins plane, entire except for distinctive irregular hollow teeth on shoulder just distal to the base, not bordered; apex broadly to narrowly acute or subulate; costa strong, percurrent to shortly excurrent as a stout mucro, in transverse section elliptic; adaxial surface cells quadrate to elongate, adaxial epidermis present, adaxial stereid band, medial guide cells and abaxial stereid band present, abaxial epidermis sometimes absent, hydroid strand absent; basal cells sharply differentiated across to the margin where they become narrower, elongate, bulging-rectangular to rhomboidal, hyaline, smooth, lax and thin-walled; distal laminal cells subquadrate, walls sometimes irregularly thickened, papillae low, indistinct, simple or 2-fid, several per cell. Specialized asexual reproduction reportedly by rhizoidal brood bodies. Sexual condition dioicous; perigonia terminal, interior leaves long‑lanceolate, similar to those of the stem; perichaetia terminal, leaves as in stem leaves, ovate-lanceolate, to 2.5 mm and sheathing. Seta to 8 mm, single, erect. Capsule erect, symmetrical, yellow-brown, ovoid to cylindrical; annulus weakly developed, of ca. 2 rows of subvesiculose cells; operculum obliquely conic-rostrate; peristome teeth 16, straight or slightly oblique, lanceolate, finely papillose, entire to variously cleft. Calyptra cucullate, smooth. Spores 8-14 µm, spherical, mostly smooth. Laminal KOH color reaction yellow.
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