Plants in dense or open turfs, red, pink, green, or yellow-green. Stems 0.5-3 cm, fertile stems comose, innovations evenly foliate. Leaves shiny yellow-green to red or pink, crowded, strongly contorted to shrunken when dry, ovate-lanceolate, flat, 0.5-3 mm, often gradually enlarged toward stem apex; base usually green, not decurrent; margins revolute proximally, limbidium strong, in 2 or 3 rows; apex acute to acuminate; costa excurrent to long-excurrent, awn smooth or denticulate; proximal laminal cells long-rectangular, 3-5:1; medial and distal cells 15-25 µm wide, 2-3:1, walls thin to moderately thick. Specialized asexual reproduction absent. Sexual condition polyoicous, variable, often populations either synoicous or only archegoniate. Seta brown or red-brown, 1-3 cm, slender, straight to somewhat flexuose. Capsule brown, shape highly variable, elongate-pyriform to clavate, symmetric to somewhat curved, 3-5 mm, mouth orange-brown to red; ; operculum short-conic, weakly apiculate; peristome variable, reduced; exostome teeth yellow or brown, hyaline distally, lamellae straight, sometimes with small pores near base along mid line; endostome weakly adherent to exostome, basal membrane low to 1/2 exostome height, segments with slitlike perforations, cilia absent or rudimentary. Spores with size often variable in same capsule, 24-30(-32) µm, yellow.
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