Herb, dioecious, perennial, rhizomatous. Rhizomes long or short, 5–12 mm diam., with broad overlapping, scarious scales covering a dense woolly pubescence. Culms erect, terete, smooth or minutely rugose when fresh, glabrous, unbranched below the inflorescence or with numerous sterile lateral branches; internodes few to numerous. Sheaths appressed or the upper ones slightly spreading, persistent, apically sometimes auriculate; ligule a narrow ridge, sometimes densely ciliate; lamina absent or rarely present. Inflorescence of few or numerous spikelets, terminal or axillary on culm and inflorescence branches. Spathes similar to cauline sheaths. Male and female spikelets similar or the females longer and narrower, many-flowered, usually with several sterile lower glumes: males 4.5–6.5 (–9) mm long, females 5–8 mm long. Glumes thin-textured and scarious, glabrous or with fimbriate margin, with slender, usually straight awns, caducous. Flowers borne on a short pedicel attached to the glume base; tepals glossy, usually acute, glabrous or pubescent; outer tepals keeled, inner tepals flat. Male flowers: tepals 6; outer tepals slightly longer than inner tepals or equal; stamens 3, anthers exserted, pistillode absent or minute. Female flowers: tepals 4; staminodes 2; ovary 2-locular; styles 2, very shortly united at base, recurved. Fruit a thin-walled capsule, compressed, circular in outline, shed with persistent perianth and still attached to the glume but eventually dehiscing. Seed ellipsoid, surface smooth, mostly with isodiametric cells. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma of 1–3 layers of elongated peg cells, not interrupted by thick-walled cells, central cavity present.
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