Plants in dense or open turfs, dull green, yellow-green, or brownish. Stems (1-)2-4(-6) cm, fertile stems comose, innovations evenly foliate. Leaves dull green to yellow-green, crowded, strongly contorted to shrunken when dry, often broadly ovate-lanceolate, somewhat concave, 1-3 mm, gradually enlarged toward stem apex; base green, not or weakly decurrent; margins plane or occasionally weakly revolute proximally, limbidium strong, in 2 or 3 rows; apex acute to acuminate; costa percurrent to short-excurrent, awn slender; proximal laminal cells rectangular, 3-4:1; medial and distal cells 18-25(-30) µm wide, 2-3:1, walls thin. Specialized asexual reproduction absent. Sexual condition dioicous. Seta brown or red-brown, 1-3(-4) cm, slender, straight to somewhat flexuose. Capsule pale yellow to yellow-brown, becoming black with age, turbinate to short-pyriform, symmetric, 3-5 mm, mouth yellow; operculum conic, apiculate; peristome well developed; exostome teeth yellow to orange basally, hyaline distally, lamellae straight, pores absent near base along mid line; endostome not adherent to exostome, basal membrane 1/2 exostome height, segments with ovate perforations, cilia appendiculate to nodose. Spores 18-22 µm, yellow to brown.
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