Montana Field Guide

Plants: Small and slight, olive green to yellow with green tones. Stems typically 5-25 mm in length, curving upward, nearly pinnately branched to scarcely branched; rhizoids characteristically throughout (FNA 2007).

Leaves: Similar dry as when wet, overlapping somewhat, spreading a little to ca 45 degrees or curved back and downward slightly when wet, 1.5-1.8 mm in length, 0.5-0.6 mm in width, lance-shaped with ovate tendencies, with small, plane auricles; margins curved back and down throughout or only faintly so along part of each margin; usually with a hair-point, seldom wanting, the hair-point somewhat long on the topmost leaves, subulate, with a few fine teeth, lacking papillae or with a few papillae below, not extending back along the margins; costa extending to the apex, not lying in a groove, very flat on the dorsal surface (FNA 2007).

Leaf Cells: Margins unistratose; costa of 2 cell layers throughout or sometimes 3 near the base; middle and upper laminal cells nearly square or slightly lengthened, sinuose, appearing yellowish and opaque from the thick covering of large papillae on both surfaces; basal laminal cells long and quadrangular, with walls pitted, knobby, and somewhat thick, lacking papillae in the several rows at the leaf attachment; alar cells nearly square or lengthened slightly with fine walls, transparent or translucent in 3-6 rows; supra-alar cells square or nearly so, with fine, straight walls, creating borders at the margins of up to 15 cells (FNA 2007).

Distinguished by its hair-point with no or few papillae at its base, the costa which is percurrent and not lying in a groove, the diminutive auricles, and the yellowish upper laminal cells thickly covered with prominent papillae (FNA 2007).

Acidophilic; on dry, exposed soil of heaths above timberline. Elevation: 6230-8200 feet (FNA 2007).

Fruit unknown (FNA 2007).