Plants in pale, greenish, whitish, or brownish tufts. Leaves crowded, erect to squarrose-recurved, sometimes flexuose or incurved to falcate-secund, thick and fleshy, lanceolate to ligulate from a somewhat broader base; costa filling the leaf point and most of the base, consisting of a ± median layer of small chlorocysts enclosed on both surfaces by 1 or more layers of large, empty leucocysts; chlorocysts in surface view loosely reticulate in arrangement and rectangular or bead-like, in section 3-4-angled; leucocysts rectangular, with 1 or more large pores on connecting walls, in section not or slightly bulging; lamina restricted to the leaf base and consisting of 1-20 rows of hyaline cells on either side of the costa. Setae single, generally straight; capsules immersed or (more often) exserted, ± erect and symmetric or nodding and asymmetric, often strumose, usually ribbed when dry; annulus usually none; operculum short- to long-rostrate; peristome single (or absent), of 8 or 16 lanceolate, bifid teeth, vertically striolate (usually pitted-striolate), papillose, or smooth. Spores lightly papillose. Calyptrae mitrate or cucullate, naked, rarely ciliate-fringed at base.