E-Flora BC: Electronic Atlas of the Flora of British Columbia

Species description:
Species name meaning straw-coloured, based on the colour of the leafy plants.

Reproduction:
Sporophytes infrequent, seta red-yellow to red, elon­gate; sporangia curved, cylindric to ovoid, brown when ripe. The plants are somewhat brittle when dry; the fragments may serve in vegetative reproduction.

Distinguishing characteristics:
The shiny, elongate, slender, pale yellow-­green, glossy, unbranched or little-branched, leafy shoots that bear blunt leaves that have a midrib, combined with the wetland habitat, are distinctive.

Habit:
Erect or reclining shoots sometimes forming loose or dense turfs, or shoots scattered among other mosses. Plants tending to be sparsely branched or unbranched, slender, glossy, soft and pale yellowish-green to golden yellow in sunny sites.

Similar Species:
From Drepanocladus pseudostramineus, which it resem­bles, C. stramineum differs by the blunt rather than acute leaf-tips and the more pronounced differentiated alar cells in Drepanocladus. From unbranched specimens of Brachythecium it can also be distinguished by the acute or acuminate leaves of Brachythecium.