Montana Field Guide

Plant: Large, in mats. Yellow-green, golden-green, to brown-green; usually black below and sometimes with green tips. Stems erect or prostrate, 5-15+ cm long, and usually branched.

Leaf: When dry, leaves imbricate, falcate, and usually rugose. Leaves ovate-lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate, broadest above the base, 2-4 x 1.4-1.8 mm, somewhat asymmetric, concave, not decurrent, and not plicate. Apex acuminate or usually abruptly narrowed to an obtuse or acute apex, and sometimes apiculate. Margins plane or involute and entire or minutely serrulate at the apex. Costa absent or faint and short and double.

Leaf Cells: Basal leaf cells shorter than median leaf cells and strongly pitted. Median leaf cells long and narrow, 75-110 x 6-7 µm, and somewhat pitted. Alar cells, few, somewhat inflated, and with thinner walls.

Exposed or submerged rocks in rivers and streams (Elliott 2016). Also found on wet soil in calcareous seeps and fens, and soil of bogs, ponds, and other wetlands. From low elevations to about 10,000 feet.

Dioicous. Seta is 4.0-6.0 cm tall. Capsules arcuate with the neck erect, 3-4 mm long, brown, and a little plicate and shrunken under the mouth when dry. Calyptra cucullate.