Herb, dioecious, rhizomatous, perennial; males with similar fertile and vegetative culms; females with aerial vegetative culms but spikelets subterranean. Rhizome to 30 cm long, 0.5–2.0 mm diam.; scales lanceolate, scarious, pale to chestnut, shortly ciliate. Cataphylls to 6 cm long, glossy, pale to chestnut, lanceolate, apex with white hairs. Culms 8–30 cm long, usually spaced to 15 cm; basal internode 4–12 cm long, erect, slender, 0.7–1.1 mm diam., terete, smooth to rugose or striate, tomentose or pilose with short white hairs; branched above the 1st internode; branches 1.5–2.0 mm diam., erect or curved, compressed to subterete with a longitudinal furrow, striate, glabrous, green; branchlets 1–4 cm long, 1.5–2 mm wide, often several arising from each culm sheath axil, not repeatedly branched, often prominently mucronate; the mucro 1–4 mm long. Sheaths appressed, 5–12 mm long, rigid, brown, acute to less often truncate, with a short erect lamina, fringed with white hairs c. 1 mm long. Male spikelets solitary, terminal, ovoid, 6–12 mm long, 4–9 mm wide; glumes c. 8 sterile lower and to 50 fertile upper, lanceolate, 2.5–3.0 mm long, mucronate. Female spikelets solitary, sessile on rhizome branches. Male flowers: tepals brown-hyaline, 2.5–2.7 mm long; filaments 3.0–3.2 mm long, slender; anthers 1.0–1.2 mm long. Female flowers with only the style, stigmas and cataphyll tips above ground; fruit maturing below ground; flower enclosed by numerous glossy, pale or chestnut bracts 1–8 cm long; between bracts and tepals are dense, silky, long (8–10 mm) white hairs. Female flowers: tepals 6, hyaline, oblong-lanceolate; apex acute, fimbriate, 3–10 mm long; ovary 1-locular but 3-angular, brown; style emergent, 8–11 cm long, basally terete for 4–7 cm; branches 3, 4–6 cm long, mostly exerted from the enclosing bracts. Fruit obpyriform, brown or black, c. 15 mm long, c. 9 mm diam.
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