Plants medium to robust, in loose tufts or scattered among other mosses, green to glaucous green, brownish with age. Stems 2–5 cm, commonly branching by inno-vations, frequently dendroid. Leaves 2.5–6 mm, densely imbricate and crowded toward the stem and branch tips, erect-appressed and somewhat incurved when dry, reflexed and widely spreading when moist, gradually to rather abruptly contracted to the blade, the hinge-cells sharply differentiated; sheath ovate to obovate, hyaline-margined on the flanks, with a wedge of incrassate hinge cells at the shoulders and extending a short distance up the blade margin; blade broadly oblong-lanceolate to narrowly linear-lanceolate, only slightly concave, toothed from apex almost to the shoulders, or sometimes subentire; costa percurrent or slightly excurrent as a subulate, serrate to smooth point, smooth abaxially or sparingly toothed towards the tip; lamellae 30–46, entire in profile, 4–7 cells high, the marginal cells enlarged, thick-walled and coarsely papillose, in section rounded to elliptical, broader than high, the distal wall broadly convex, the lumen rounded pentagonal; sheath cells short-rectangular to ± isodiametric approaching the blade; cells on abaxial surface of blade 24–27 µm, irregularly quadrate, ± isodiametric, thick-walled, the transverse walls often thicker. Seta 1–4 cm, typically one per perichaetium but several per plant at the tips of branches. Capsule 2–3 mm, short-cylindric to ovate-cylindric, erect to inclined, light brown to reddish brown to blackish with age; exothecium mammillose, densely areolate, the cells rounded quadrate, incrassate, with slit-like pits in the outer wall; peristome 300–350 µm, divided to 0.6, the teeth rather broad, reddish brown with hyaline margins. Spores 10–18 µm.
