Plants dark green to brownish, dull, forming hard tufts. Stem unbranched, erect, 0.5--1 mm, strongly radiculose. Leaves 0.5--4 mm, crisped and imbricate when dry, margins entire or weakly toothed with papillae, apex blunt, the most proximal leaves shorter than the most distal, laminal cells mammillose or papillose through most of lamima. Perichaetial leaves brownish when mature, with spinulose awn, lamina at awn base lacerate and membranaceous. Capsule broadly ovoid, (2--)3--4 mm, stomata phaneropore near capsule base; mature sporangium emergent from spreading perichaetium. Spores 6--8 mm.

Capsules mature early summer. Soil banks and soil of forest floor, also in tundra; 1--1000 m; B.C., N.B. Nfld., N.S., Ont., P.E.I., Que.; Alaska, Ala., Ark., Conn., Del., Ga., Ill., Ind Kans., Ky., La., Mass., Me., Md., Mo., N.C., N.H., N.J., N.Y., Ohio, Okla., Penn., S.C., Va., Vt.., Wis., W. Va.; Mexico; Central America (Guatemala); Europe; Asia, Atlantic Islands (Azores, Iceland, Madeira).

In western North America, this species is terrestrial in tundra sites, often in blowouts; it is also found as humid perpendicular sods pendent from ledges and on rock in canyon walls; in eastern North America on banks and horizontal surfaces in forest. When sterile, this terrestrial moss can be mistaken for a pottiaceous moss, but the rhizoid compacted turf is usually enough to mark it. The unique golf-tee-like protonemal flaps, which can be excavated from the rhizoids, are a distinctive family trait.