Plants slender, in dense green to yellow-green mats or tufts. Stems 0.2--0.3 mm wide and up to 4 cm long, slender, yellow-brown, curved--ascending, sometimes creeping Leaves erect to erect-spreading, narrowly lanceolate, gradually subulate, homomallous, 1--1.8 mm occasionally ± twisted-flexuose when dry, smooth or faintly striolate, margins plane to somewhat revolute, entire or somewhat sinuate, costa absent or very short and double, cells elongate, linear, ± porose, 45--75 × 4--6 µm; basal cells shorter, broader, often yellow, incrassate, porose. Specialized asexual reproduction rare, by short, filamentous propagula in axils of leaves. Seta red-brown,1.5 -- 2 cm. Capsule erect and symmetric, 1.5 --2 mm; endostome low, segments somewhat longer than teeth, cilia lacking. Spores 10--14 µm.

Rarely producing sporophytes. Moist shaded calcareous soil, granite, schist, limestone, rock ledges and vertical cliff faces, tundra, 200--1500 m. Greenland; B. C., N.W.T., Nunavut, Ont.?, Que., Yukon; Alaska; n. Eurasia, China, Japan.

Orthothecium intricatum is distinguished by leaves that are homomallous, and narrowly lanceolate with plane to slightly revolute margins.