Montana Field Guide

Plants: Growing in open to crowded tufts, upper parts deep green (Flowers 1973) to olive or pale above (FNA 2014), black to brown below. Stems upright to ascending (Flowers 1973), usually with much branching, 1-12.5 cm tall (FNA 2014).

Leaves: Stem leaves rigid, upright, and flattened against the stem when dry, 2-4.5 mm in length, slenderly lanceolate or tending toward ovate (FNA 2014), strongly keeled (Flowers 1973), margins smooth, rolled toward back of leaf from base to near the tip; apex acute (FNA 2014); costa substantial, terminating at or shortly before the apex (Flowers 1973).

Leaf Cells: Basal laminal cells sometimes thick-walled and knobby, usually rectangular (Flowers 1973) and yellow in older leaves (FNA 2014); alar cells usually quadrate; upper laminal cells somewhat quadrate to rounded or oval, thick-walled, 1 cell-layer thick with 2 cell layers in places, papillose (Flowers 1973), the papillae 1 or 2 per cell, cone-shaped or forked (FNA 2014).

Non-calcareous rocks and bluff faces in coniferous or aspen forests, tree bases (FNA 2014).

Autoicous (Flowers 1973). Seta up to 1.8 mm. Capsule typically about 1/3 emerged, but may be completely immersed in or entirely held beyond the perichaetial bracts, short-oblong to rounded-ovate, 1.3-1.8 mm in length, sometimes conspicuously 8-ribbed for part of its length (FNA 2014), yellow to ochre (Flowers 1973), with male organs in the leaf axils (FNA 2014).