Plants: 2.5–4 cm, yellowish, brownish, or dark green. Leaves: erect-spreading and flexuose-crisped when dry, 2.5–4 mm, gradually narrowed from an ovate base to a long, slender, subtubulose subula; margins distinctly recurved below, erect or incurved above, serrulate at or near the slender apex; costa percurrent, filling most of the subula; distal cells subquadrate, 1–2:1 (ca. 17 × 10 µm), 2-stratose at the margins. Sexual: condition dioicous. Seta: red, 5–8 mm. Capsule: inclined to horizontal, 0.8 mm, obovoid-oblong, curved, not strumose, smooth; annulus none; operculum-conic; peristome teeth ca. 425 µm, divided 1/2 length distally. Spores: 15–17 µm, smooth. Phenology: Capsules mature fall and winter.
Wet, silty soil of roadside ditch banks and soil of cliff crevices. low to medium elevations. B.C., Calif., Wash.
Distinctive features of Dicranella pacifica include slender, flexuose-crisped, subtubulose leaves with margins recurved below but 2-stratose and incurved above, high-conic opercula, and annulus absent.