SPORANGIA: total height 1 to 1.5 mm., scattered or gregarious, globose, stalked, erect, 0.3 to 0.5 mm. diam., usually brownish, reddish, or bronze, sometimes steel-blue, iridescent.

PERIDIUM: delicately membranous, colorless, falling away in large fragments.

STALK: setaceous, black, shining, rising from a purple-brown, circular hypothallus.

COLUMELLA: cylindrical, truncate, scarcely reaching to half the height of the sporangium.

CAPILLITIUM: of rigid threads, radiating from the apex of the columella, dichotomously branching and anastomosing, black or purple-brown, pale at the base, colored to the free extremities; the threads often connecting the apex of the columella with the somewhat persistent base of the sporangial wall are usually slender and colorless.