Plants in compact, dark- to light-green and often glaucous tufts, usually light-brown below. Stems occasionally branched; central strand usually strong, often dark-brown or collapsed. Propagula rare, on much reduced plants, obovoid to spindle-shaped. Leaves flat, broadly grooved or rarely somewhat keeled, linear, ligulate, long-oblong, linear-lanceolate, or ovate-lanceolate; margins occasionally ± recurved below or rarely beyond the leaf middle, often sinuolate above or serrulate near the base; costa covered ventrally toward the apex by bulging, papillose, quadrate cells or short- to long-rectangular cells which are non-bulging and smooth or weakly papillose, the ventral stereid band none or strongly differentiated; upper cells usually heterogeneous in shape and size, subquadrate to rectangular or triangular, often 2-3-stratose along the margins or in median patches, the papillae low, broad, and simple or irregular to granulose, scattered or occasionally massive, compound, and centered over the lumina, usually with 3-4 salients per cell. Dioicous. Perigonia 1(-4), on short branches, gemmiform, the outer bracts occasionally serrate. Perichaetia on short branches, the bracts with cells thin-walled and elongate throughout or occasionally only below the middle. Setae elongate; capsules short-ellipsoidal, cylindric, or ovoid, often wide-mouthed, often collapsed and irregular when old; annulus of 2-3 layers of ovate-hexagonal, weakly vesiculose cells; operculum long-rostrate, oblique or occasionally abruptly curved; peristome none.