Japan Flora: Stems long-creeping, subterranean, slender, about 2.5 mm. wide, loosely scaly; branches erect, 15-30 cm. long, simple at base, much branched above, rather loosely to densely leafy; leaves all alike, linear to broadly so, 3-4 mm. long, 0.5-0.7 mm. wide, green, spreading, often incurved at apex, minutely spine­tipped; spikes 1 to several on a branch, solitary and terminal on the branchlets, erect, 2-5 cm. long, the bracts cordate-del­toid, undulate, more or less scarious-margined, with a short cusp at the tip. Damp coniferous woods in mountains.

Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu; rather common. s. Kuriles, Sakhalin, Korea, e. Siberia, and N. America.

f. strictum (Milde) D. C. Eaton. Branchlets short, erect; plant with a treelike aspect.            

f. flabellatum (Milde) Takeda. Branchlets obliquely spreading, subflabellate.

Russia Flora: Plant up to 30 cm tall. Horizontal stems long, lying in the soil at a depth of 5-6 cm, about 2.5 mm in diameter. Aboveground, vertical branches straight, very branched at the top, more or less densely covered with phyllodia. Branches arranged in a fan-like manner. Phyllodia equal, linear, 5-6 mm long, 0.5-0.6 mm wide, obliquely directed upward, at the apex uniformly pointed and rather long drawn into a sharp tip. Lateral phyllodia arranged in one plane. Strobiloids sessile, up to 4 cm long, 6 mm wide. Sporophylloids cordate, suddenly drawn into a point, with a membranous wavy finely serrated edge, 4-5 mm long, at the base with a short reniform sporangium 1.5 mm long (Table I).

Apparently in all regions of the East Asian area (Fig. 3). — Cedar-broadleaf forests and their derivatives. VIII-IX. Protected. — General distribution: Japan-China, North America. 

Note: V.N. Siplivinsky (Novosti sist. vyssh. rast. 1973, 10: 348) believes that L. obscurum is absent in Asia, being replaced by the vicariant species L. japonicum Thunb., distributed in our country "only in the southern half of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands."