Plants glaucous or brownish green, usually in dense tufts. Stems 0.5--3 cm. Leaves erect to erect-spreading and somewhat flexuose when dry, spreading when moist, 2--5 mm, narrowly lanceolate-subulate from a sheathing base, not particularly fragile, tips usually intact, shoulders well developed, firm; margins usually strongly revolute, entire proximally, serrulate distally, teeth often paired; costa excurrent in serrulate tip, rough abaxially in the distal portion, not filling the acumen; basal laminal cells thick-walled toward costa, thin-walled toward margins, distal cells 8--25 × 4--8 µm. Sexual condition synoicous or dioicous. Seta straight to slightly arcuate, 6--16 mm. Capsule globose to ovoid, asymmetrical, furrowed, 1.5--2.5 mm; operculum low convex, beak blunt; peristome single or double; teeth lanceolate, 200-350 µm, reddish brown, strongly transversely barred, finely papillose proximally, vertically striate above; endostome absent or, if present, rudimentary and represented by a basal membrane, occasionally with segments less than 1/3 the length of the teeth; cilia absent. Spores subspherical, dark brown, 25--35(--40) µm, coarsely papillose.

Capsules mature Nov. Rock crevices and canyon ledges; 1800--4000 m.; Ariz., N. Mex.; Mexico; West Indies (Dominican Republic); Central America (Costa Rica, Guatemala); South America (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela).

Bartramia brevifolia is recognized by the differentiated leaf base having thick-walled cells toward the costa and thin-walled cells toward the margins. Material collected in Arizona by Bartram and identified as either Bartramia microstoma Mitt. or B. glauca Lor. is B. brevifolia. The type of B. microstoma is not included with the Mitten herbarium at NY, but several collections of this species from Latin America have been annotated by Fransén as B. brevifolia. S. Fransén (1995) reduced B. glauca to synonymy under B. potosica.