Plants usually epiphytic, less often terrestrial, forming festoonlike mats. Stems radially symmetric, long-pendent, not readily fragmenting, irregularly forked, without budlike arrested branches, tips straight; main stem indeterminate, lateral branches determinate, ascending, 1-forked. Rhizophores borne on upperside of stems, restricted to base of pendent stems, or borne throughout on terrestrial stems, 0.13--0.2 mm diam. Leaves monomorphic, in alternate pseudowhorls of 4 (on main stem) and 3 (on lateral branches and secondary branches), loosely appressed, ascending, green, narrowly triangular-lanceolate to linear-lanceolate, 2--3.35 X 0.4--0.6 mm; abaxial ridges prominent, often flanked by two bands of cells (several rows wide) with whitish papillae (only in S . oregana , better seen on dry leaves); base cuneate and strongly decurrent on main stems and lateral branches or rounded and slightly decurrent to adnate on secondary branches, glabrous (seldom pubescent); margins entire or with very short cilia or denticulate, cilia few, transparent, scattered, ascending to slightly spreading, dentiform toward apex, 0.02--0.04 mm; apex slightly keeled, long-attenuate, short-bristled; bristle (hard to distinguish from apex) transparent or greenish transparent to yellowish or brownish (in old leaves), smooth, sometimes breaking off, (0.07--)0.17--0.4 mm. Strobili often paired, 1--6 cm; sporophylls lanceolate to narrowly ovate-lanceolate, abaxial ridges prominent, base glabrous, margins short-ciliate to denticulate (at middle), entire toward both base and apex, apex keeled to plane, short-bristled or merely long-attenuate.
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