Japan Flora: Stems nearly simple or sparsely forked, erect from a short ascending base, 3-10 cm. long, 4-12 mm. wide including the leaves, with bulbils in upper portion; leaves rather thick and dense, linear-lanceolate, 3-5 mm. long, 0.8-1 mm. wide, ascending, incurved to appressed toward apex, ecostate, acuminate, entire, lustrous, scarcely broadened at base; sporangia reniform, in axils of ordinary leaves.--------- Mossy sunny slopes in alpine regions; Hokkaido, Honshu (centr. and n. distr.), Kyushu (Yakushima); rather rare. Kuriles, Kamchatka to Europe and N. America.
var. chinense (Christ) Ohwi. Stems 8-15 cm. long, rather slender; leaves broadly linear, 3-7 mm. long, 0.5-0.8 mm. wide, spreading to obliquely ascending, the lower ones sometimes slightly deflexed, slightly incurved above, acuminate. Coniferous woods in mountains; Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu; rather rare. s. Kuriles, Korea, and China.
var. somae (Hayata) Ohwi. Stems slender, often rubescent at base, 3-10 cm. long, 3-5 mm. across including the leaves; leaves smaller, narrowly oblong to narrowly lanceolate, 2-3 mm. long, 0.5-0.8 mm. wide, short- acuminate, deflexed. Woods in mountains; Kyushu (Yakushima) ; rare. Formosa.
Russia Flora: Plant up to 20 cm tall. Stems ascending at the base, then straight or slightly sinuous, bright green, densely covered with phyllodia. Phyllodia triangular-lanceolate, up to 6 mm long, 1 mm wide, at the bottom of the stem deflected downward, in the middle part appressed or more or less spreading. Stems with phyllodia at the base up to 6 mm thick, in the middle and upper parts uniform, up to 1 cm thick. Sporangia broadly cordate, up to 1 mm long, numerous. Reproductive buds 4 mm long, numerous, inconspicuous.
Anadyr-Penzhina, Koryak, Kolyma, Okhotsk, Aldan, Kamchatka, Commander Islands, Northern Sakhalin, Northern Kuril Islands, Amur, Ussuri, Southern Sakhalin, Southern Kuril Islands — Moist forests, thickets of dwarf cedar and alder, tundra, moist rocks in lowlands, in forest and subalpine belts. VIII-IX. Protected. — General distribution: European part, Caucasus, Central Asia (Dzungarian Alatau), Western Siberia, Eastern Siberia; North America.