Plants reddish to brownish green, in robust, slightly glossy mats. Stems ca. 3 mm wide and 4--10 cm long, sparingly branched. Leaves ± appressed when dry, erect-spreading when moist, linear-lanceolate, with long, slenderly acuminate points, 3 mm, caniculate-concave, strongly plicate, not decurrent, margins plane, entire, costa absent; median and distal cells linear. 65--85 × 4--5 µm; proximal cells shorter, 20--40 µm, walls porose. Specialized asexual reproduction absent. [Seta purple, erect. Capsule erect, operculum obliquely conic-rostrate. Spores ca. 16 µm.]

Moist tundra, on soil, granite, limestone, schist, 2--1645 m. Greenland; N.W.T., Nunavut, Yukon; Alaska; Europe; Asia (Siberia, Japan).

Plants of Orthothecium rufescens, like those of O. chryseum, are large and robust with distinctly plicate leaves, but can be distinguished from this species by the reddish color and slenderly acuminate leaves.