Herbs dioecious, perennial, rhizomatous, forming extensive dense or diffuse patches to 5 m or more across; cluster roots developed. Rhizome extended, 1.5–4.0 mm diam., with glossy-brown deltoid scarious scales partly covering a pale brown, woolly pubescence. Culms slender, ± terete, simple below the inflorescence, 0.5–1.5 mm diam., 30–80 cm long, substriate, grey-green due to a covering of pale, scale-like fan hairs; internodes 3–5.5 (–8.5) cm long. Sheaths 5–10 mm long, striate, red-brown, apex ± truncate with a slender, narrow, often caducous lamina to c. 3 mm long; margin hyaline, initially prominent, as long as lamina, but weathering away. Inflorescence: males interrupted, terminal, 2–4 (–10) cm long, the branches and spikelet pedicels filiform and often whitish with a minute tomentum; females narrow, erect, terminal, to 5 cm long. Male spikelets narrow-ovoid to cylindrical, 5–15 mm long, 1–4 mm diam., with 13–34 glumes; glumes all fertile, or the lowest 1 or 2 empty, ovate, 2.5–4.5 mm long, brown, glabrous, acuminate to cuspidate, often with hyaline margin; mucro rigid, to 1 mm long. Female spikelets in dense clusters surrounded by scarious spathes; spathes ovate, 2.5–5.0 mm wide, mucro to 1.0 mm long, membranous margin 1.0 mm wide; glumes, ovate, 2.0–3.5 mm long, brown-hyaline, glabrous, acuminate to cuspidate with a short mucro to 1 mm long. Male flowers: tepals 5 or 6, membranous, pale brown, floral parts attached to a swollen receptacle, with a gap between outer and inner tepals; outer tepals weakly keeled, 1.7–3.0 mm long; inner tepals 1.4–2.5 mm long; stamens 3; anthers partially exerted, 0.8–1.7 mm long; pistillode minute. Female flowers shortly pedicellate; the pedicel with a floral bract mostly slightly longer than the flower, broad-ovate, keeled, 1.7–3.5 mm long, acute, mucro to 0.8 mm long; tepals 6, ovate, acuminate to truncate with a small mucro, brown-hyaline, glabrous; outer tepals keeled 2.0–2.2 mm long; inner tepals flat, 1.6–2.0 mm long; style 3-branched, basal half connate and persistent, free portion wholly stigmatic. Nut c. 1 mm long; seed 0.8 mm long. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma of short cells, interrupted by pillar cells opposite the outer vascular bundles.
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