Stems 1-4(-8) cm high, occasionally red-tomentose, sometimes papillose. Leaves usually distant, when dry erect- to spreading-incurved, sometimes ± twisted or secund, when moist spreading to squarrose or recurved, the base scarcely differentiated to oval, not sheathing, not or narrowly decurrent; margins entire or rarely serrulate above or below owing to projecting cell walls, rarely distantly denticulate and rarely bistratose above; costa ending 1-2 cells below the apex to short-excurrent as a broad apiculus, sometimes ending in a single pellucid cell and usually serrulate because of projecting cell walls, with 1 or 2 stereid bands; upper cells with 3-5 bifid papillae (or rarely 1 per cell and multifid), plate-like or granulose; basal cells usually differentiated next to the costa, the marginal cells occasionally differentiated in 1-3 rows of narrowly rectangular, thin-walled cells extending into a decurrency, the median basal cells hyaline to yellowish, smooth or weakly papillose above, 9-15 µm wide and 2-4:1, with walls thin or evenly thickened, sometimes irregularly thickened and pitted. Setae (3-)4-8(-10) mm long; capsules 0.7-1.2(-1.5) mm long, occasionally inclined and oblique-mouthed; annulus consisting of weakly vesiculose, yellow-brown, occasionally hexagonal cells; operculum (0.4-)0.5-0.8(-1.7) mm long, its cells in straight or ± spiral rows. Spores (9-)10-13(-15) µm, lightly papillose to low-spiculose.