Plants whitish or grayish, frequently tinged with yellow, brown, or red, in rather compact tufts 0.5-3 cm high. Leaves 2.5-5.5 mm long, wide-spreading to recurved, plane, ligulate from a pale, oblong or obovate base, rounded-obtuse to broadly acute, apiculate, ± crenate-serrulate at the apex and narrowly bordered by linear cells in the upper 1/2 or less, usually crenate or irregularly serrate at the shoulders, often radiculose at the tip or occasionally bearing clusters of green, subcylindric gemmae; costa filling all of the limb, narrowed below the shoulders; cells of the base lax and thin-walled, oblong-hexagonal. Setae 3-4.5 mm long, yellow (or brownish with age); capsules 1-1.25 mm long, oblong to oblong-ovoid, brown, usually ± striate when old; annulus of 1-2 rows of small, brown, thick-walled cells; operculum 0.7-0.9 mm long; peristome teeth 8, short, lanceolate, entire, yellow, smooth. Spores 16-23 µm, finely papillose.