Branches mostly elongate, often branched. Leaves narrowly acute to short-acuminate, wide-spreading when wet, mostly 1.3--1.6 mm; costa ending in base of acumen, often laterally spurred, not 2-fid at tip. Interior perichaetial leaves mostly 2.5--2.8 mm; awns distinct, strongly denticulate, about 1/2 length of expanded portion of leaf. Peristome double; exostome teeth single; endostome segments slenderly triangular. Calyptra conic. Spores papillose.

Capsules mature Mar.--Apr. Twigs and branches of trees and shrubs, in humid forests; 0 m; Fla.; Mexico; West Indies; Central America.

Vegetatively, C. filiformis is rather similar to C. glomerata, but the branches of the former are generally longer and the interior perichaetial leaves are much longer and have proportionally longer awns. Although A. J. Grout (1934) wrote that the capsules of C. filiformis are often at the tips of stems and branches, this is not correct; he was misled by a mixed collection that included Schoenobryum concavifolium in addition to C. filiformis. In S. concavifolium the perichaetia are terminal. Cryphaea filiformis was attributed to Georgia by A. J. Sharp et al. (1994), but this was an error based on misinterpretation of the specimen label on A. J. Grout's North American Musci Perfecti 218, a mixed collection partly from southern Georgia and partly from southern FLorida.