Brachythecium campestre

Detailed description

Medium, soft, yellowish-green, moss forming loose mats. Stems prostrate subpinnately or irregularly branched, yellowish, c. 75 mm, in cross-section, brown below, with smooth rhizoids (in bunches on lower side of leaf bases). Branches variable in length. Stem leaves erect-spreading, symmetric, keeled, ovate-lanceolate to lanceolate from a weakly auriculate base, evenly tapered to a narrowly acuminate apex, irregularly recurved or not at margins, concave, slightly decurrent ornot, serrulate in lower two-thirds (often more strongly near base), entire or nearly so near apex, 2.6–3.3 × 1.0 mm. Branch leaves somewhat smaller, 2.0–3.0 × 0.5–0.8 mm, strongly serrulate above. Nerve c. 30 µm wide, ½–¾ the length of the leaf (often obscured by leaf plications), with or without a terminal abaxial spine. Upper laminal cells smooth, firm-walled, linear, 90–120 × 5–7 µm, basal cells shorter in c. 3–5 rows, alar cells quadrate to irregularly oblong, forming a rather large but indistinct alar group (smaller in branch leaves). Autoicous. Perichaetial leaves acuminate from an oblong base, erect. Perigonia scattered on stems, c. 1 mm long, bracts broadly ovate bracts, paraphyses filiform. Setae 13–28 mm, papillose throughout, c. 240–310 µm diameter, weakly twisted to the left below and to the right above, orange to red-brown. Capsules horizontal, asymmetric, 2.5–3.0 mm long, oblong-ovoid, yellowish-brown. Operculum conic, very shortly apiculate. Spores 14–18 µm, nearly smooth.