Plants in loose tufts on small stems and leaves, to 3 cm high, yellow-green to golden-green often with a reddish cast. Leaves spreading when moist but crispate when dry, not at all keeled. Leaves ovate-lanceolate, to 6 mm long, about 4:1, acuminate with the costa short excurrent. Median laminal cells to 25 µm broad, thin-walled, elongate hexagonal, 2-3:1, smooth. Marginal cells near leaf apex smaller, thicker-walled and more nearly quadrate, often with conspicuous brownish walls. Basal cells only gradually differentiated from those of lamina, long rectangular, to 18 µm broad, about 12:1, smooth, with thin and straight lateral walls. Marginal cells of leaf base abruptly more narrow than adjacent interior cells, forming a well-defined limbidium which may, however, be obscured by the recurvature. Adaxial cells of costa similar to those of lamina; abaxial cells elongate rectangular. Costa cross-section with only a few abaxial stereids, about 2 guide cells and 2 adaxial epidermal cells. Margin not at all decurrent, narrowly recurved to about the middle, plane above, entire at base but dentate above the middle, often with long (to 300 µm), deciduous, uniseriate fimbriae which apparently act as propagulae. Axillary hairs to 200 µm, 7-8-celled with the cells progressively longer distally, no basal brown cells. Rhizoids red-brown, to 30 µm wide at base, smooth and irregularly branched, arising on stem adaxial to costa insertion and in a decurrent band below costa. Stem without central strand, with thin-walled inner cortical cells and an abruptly differentiated group of 1-2 rows of thicker walled, smaller outer cortical cells which are mammillose-bulging on stem surface. Autoicous to synoicous. Perichaetial leaves few, much smaller (to 1 mm) than vegetative leaves. Seta to 5 mm, straight, smooth. Capsule erect and symmetrical with the urn cylindrical 3-4:1, to 2 mm long. Operculum conic and straight, to 1/2 of urn length. Peristome fugacious, densely papillose throughout, white to hyaline below but bright red above, to 800 µm long, sinistrorse twisted above a prominent basal membrane which is about 1/3 of total peristome length. Exothecial cells with rather thin walls, elongate-hexagonal, not in regular rows, to 25 µm wide, 1.5-3:1. Spores finely papillose, strongly bimodal in size with the larger to 25 µm and the smaller about half that diameter.
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