Crosbya nervosa

Detailed description

Dioicous. Plants densely tufted or forming mats, foliage and stems glossy, yellow-green to golden-green above, darker below. Stems up to 27 mm tall, erect or ascending, simple to sparsely branched, dark red, naked or with a few rhizoids at the leaf bases, in cross-section of uniform, large cells, brood bodies occasionally present. Leaves loosely flexuose-erect when dry, erect-spreading when moist, 1.0-2.3 mm long, ovate-lanceolate to oblong-lanceolate, quickly narrowed to cuspidate, acuminate, asymmetric apex, strongly keeled, bordered by thick-walled, linear cells in about 2-4 rows at mid-leaf, sharply set off form laminal cells at base of leaf; nerve single, excurrent into the apex and confluent with the border; margins entire, reflexed to recurved; upper leaf cells 8-15 x 7 µm, smooth, shortly rhomboidal to oval-rhomboidal, with moderately thick walls; basal cells irregularly short-rectangular to irregularly hexagonal, hyaline, noticeably larger than upper cells 12-25 x 27-50 µm, cells at insertion similar in shape, often coloured; brood bodies occasionally produced at base of outer side of leaves, fusiform, of three to six uniseriate cells. Perichaetia lateral, leaves 1.1-1.2 mm long, ovate-lanceolate to oblong-ovate, shortly acuminate, concave, border present but indistinct, nerve absent or indistinct, if present becoming faint above; upper cells 30-65 x 9-12 µm. Setae 4-6 mm long, erect to curved. Reddish, thickest at base; smooth below, somewhat roughened above, capsules 0.5-1.0 mm long, oblong-obovate when mature, ovate and somewhat constricted beneath mouth when old, gradually contracted to the seta through roughened neck about ¼ to 1/5 the length of urn; stomates numerous in a wide band around the capsule neck; Peristome double; exostome teeth 16 and endostome segments 16. Opercula conic, with a long-rostrate beak, about as long as the capsule. Spores 15-17 µm wide, spherical. Calyptrae mitriform, deeply laciniate in lower portion.