Plants 1--3 cm, in olive green tufts, lighter above and brownish below, evenly foliate, tomentose. Leaves 4--5 mm, lanceolate, gradually narrowed into a subtubulose, straight, concolorous subula; alar cells slightly differentiated, reddish or hyaline; basal laminal cells hyaline, rectangular; distal laminal cells thick-walled, subquadrate to short-rectangular or oblique; costa filling half of the leaf width, excurrent in a short, hyaline tip that is longer in perichaetial leaves, in transverse section showing adaxial hyalocysts and abaxial stereids in groups of 2 cells, ridged at back. Specialized asexual reproduction not seen. Sporophyte unknown.

Soil covered rocks; 50 m; N.C.; Central America (Costa Rica); West Indies (Jamaica); Europe (France, Germany, Greece, Italy).

This species has been found only once, in the piedmont of N.C. The distribution is very scattered and suggests a circum-Tethyan range (margins of the Caribbean and Mediterranean seas). It has been described from Europe as C. mildei Schimp. Plants of C. oerstedianus resemble C. pilifer in habit, with shorter hairpoints. In shady habitats the hairpoints are sometimes lacking. The plants are microscopically distinguished by the slightly different shape of the distal laminal cells and the transverse section of the costa, by the lack of lamellae at the back of the costa, smaller adaxial hyalocysts which have about the diameter of the median deuter cells, and groups of abaxial stereids with only 2 instead of 4 stereidal cells.