Plants robust, prostrate to suberect, 3--15 cm, branches 2--5 cm, sometimes longer, leafy stems 0.2--0.25 cm broad; golden to rusty green, shiny, irregularly to distantly pinnately branched, stem apices markedly pointed with imbricate leaves. Stems yellowish brown, central strand weakly developed; pseudoparaphyllia lanceolate to ovate, foliose, lacking cilia. Leaves of stem usually falcate-secund, ovate-lanceolate to ovate, gradually acuminate 0.2--3 × 0.1--1 mm, plicate, acuminate, somewhat toothed, margins sometimes recurved in proximal half, rarely nearly to apex; costa double, faint to distinct, basal cells thicker walled and porose, sometimes brownish yellow, alar cells well defined, forming a group 3--4 cells deep and 5--8 cells wide at base, the inner ones usually colored, grading into the basal cells, outer cells inflated somewhat and thin-walled, hyaline to yellowish, grading to brownish, subquadrate to rectangular supra-alar cells, the leaf margin curved above them, sometimes slightly auriculate. Sexual condition dioicous or phyllodioicous. Sporophytes lacking in area of flora.

Usually tundra fen slopes over shallow peat in late-snow lying sites; mainly near 200 m; Alaska (Attu I.); Asia (Japan, Korea, mainly at higher elevation, except northern part of range).

Hypnum fujiyamae somewhat resembles H. lindbergii in the field but the golden to brownish color of the plants and the imbricate cuspidate apices of the shoots mark it as different. While H. lindbergii forms turf-like mats, H. fujiyamae has reclining shoots. Microscopically these species are clearly unrelated.