Plants: 3–10 mm, silky, yellowish. Leaves: loosely erect to falcate-secund, to 2 mm, lanceolate, gradually subulate; margins erect, sometimes finely denticulate at the extreme apex and obscurely denticulate near junction of base and blade; costa long-excurrent; lamina disappearing in the distal 1/3–1/2 of the limb, with cells long-rectangular, 30–40 × 4–5 µm (7–8:1). Sexual: condition dioicous. Perichaetial: leaves to 3 mm, flexuose-spreading to squarrose, abruptly subulate from an oblong-sheathing base, finely erose or denticulate at the shoulders. Seta: 9–13 mm, reddish, becoming dark with age. Capsule: 0.7–1 mm, inclined or nodding, asymmetric, striate, not strumose; annulus compound; operculum ca. 1 mm, slenderly curved-rostrate from a conic base; peristome teeth 400 µm, divided 1/2 way length distally. Spores: 16–18 µm, minutely roughened. Phenology: Capsules mature spring and summer.
Damp soil on banks, often in rocky places at low to medium elevations. Greenland, Alta., B.C., Man., N.B., Nfld. and Labr. (Nfld.), N.S., P.E.I., Que., Yukon, Alaska, Calif., Colo., Idaho, Maine, Mass., Mich., Mont., N.H., N.Y., Wash., Wis., Wyo., n, c Europe, e Asia (Japan).