Sphagnum perichaetiale Hampe, Linnaea 20: 66. 1847.

Plants in rather small, dense, rounded clumps, soft, pale orange-brown or green tinged with red or pink; capitulum rounded in profile; cortical cells in 3–4 layers, those of the epidermis with 1–3 (rarely 6–8) pores and fibrils few and delicate or none; wood cylinder brown to dark purplish red. Stem leaves lingulate, rounded at the apex, finely fringed all around, generally approaching branch leaves in fibrils, pores, and membrane gaps. Branches in fascicles of 4-5 (2 spreading); cortical cells porose at their upper ends, with fibrils very delicate or, more often, lacking. Branch leaves ovate, broadly pointed, and concave-cucullate, roughened at back of the apex and denticulate along a marginal resorption furrow; hyaline cells convex on both surfaces, on the outer surface with few inconspicuous pseudopores in 2's and 3's at adjacent corners, passing into irregular membrane gaps above, on the inner surface with few large, unringed pores at corners and commissures; green cells in section narrowly rectangular or lenticular, equally exposed on both surfaces.