Plants 2.5-4 cm, yellowish, brownish, or dark green. Leaves erect-spreading and flexuose-crisped when dry, 2.5-4 mm, gradually narrowed from an ovate base to a long, slender, subtubulose subula; margins distinctly recurved below, erect or incurved above, serrulate at or near the slender apex; costa percurrent, filling most of the subula; distal cells subquadrate, 1-2:1 (ca. 17 × 10 µm), 2-stratose at the margins. Sexual condition dioicous. Seta red, 5-8 mm. Capsule inclined to horizontal, 0.8 mm, obovoid-oblong, curved, not strumose, smooth; annulus none; operculum-conic; peristome teeth ca. 425 µm, divided ¹/2 length distally. Spores 15-17 µm, smooth.

Capsules mature fall and winter. Wet, silty soil of roadside ditch banks and soil of cliff crevices; low to medium elevations; B.C.; Calif., Wash.

Distinctive features of Dicranella pacifica include slender, flexuose-crisped, subtubulose leaves with margins recurved below but 2-stratose and incurved above, high-conic opercula, and annulus absent.