DW5 components are typically dominated by a sphagnum moss plant community.  This unit is often found on narrower drainageways where a drier sphagnum shrub type with a deeper water table occurs.  On the southern peninsula, a deeper water table at the margin of a relict glacial drainageway might occur under a Barclay's willow (Salix barclayi) shrubland, and over a mineral soil, where Army Corps wetland criteria (1987) might only be met by the presence of shallow redoximorphic features. 

This component can also be found at the lateral margins of larger drainageways, adjacent to 'underfit' modern stream courses, or between kettles on a kettle-kame landscape.  It can also occupy the divide between two relict glacial drainageway features.

Often this component will form intermixed complexes with a wetter DW2 or DW3 component.  On these complexes micro-topography is well-developed with microtopographic highs occupied by spahgnum moss - shrub communities (DW5) and either in a matrix of sedges (DW2) on micro-lows; or with a hummocky, wet sweetgale- dwarf birch / water horsetail community (DW3).