Plants dark-green to brownish, up to 2 or 3 cm long, usually freely branched, in dense or loose clumps. Leaves extremely variable in habit, strongly contorted-spreading to straight and appressed, 4-8 mm long; upper lamina broadly lanceolate to linear-subulate, 2-3 times as long as the lower lamina, occasionally reduced to a naked costa or nearly so; cells of upper lamina square to rounded-rectangular or elliptic, usually obscure, smooth to bulging on the upper surface, smooth or papillose on the lower; lower lamina obovate to nearly obcordate, not or scarcely as wide as the upper lamina to broadly flaring and much wider, the cancellinae persistent, not colored (or rarely yellowish); costa ending in the leaf tip to shortly excurrent and roughened, smooth or papillose on the lower surface; margins of the upper lamina usually serrate-winged, with paired or single teeth above. Clavate or fusiform propagula frequent, on the upper (ventral) surface of the tip of the costa. Setae yellow-brown, 7-12 mm long; capsules 1.5-2.5 mm long, cylindric; operculum long-rostrate; peristome rudimentary, of fragile, eroded teeth of a few segments only. Spores 14-19 µm, nearly smooth to finely roughened. Calyptrae 2.5-3.5 mm long, smooth.