Perennial herbs with a woody, shortly creeping rhizome covered with ovate, many-nerved, fuscous to castaneous sheaths. Stems erect, quinquangular, hollow, inside with some indistinct septa not or hardly visible from the outside. Leaves basal, few, subcoriaceous, linear, folded lengthwise (at least when dry), complicate at the base, with 3 prominent nerves, or reduced to bladeless sheaths. Inflorescence terminal, capitate, consisting of 1-several spikelets. Involucral bracts several, long, leafy, pseudo-whorled. Spikelets terete, many-flowered. Rachilla persistent. Glumes numerous, spirally imbricate, cartilagineous, caducous, some lower ones empty. Flowers hermaphrodite, strongly dorsiventrally compressed; floral scales numerous, membranous, the lowest 2 transversal, opposite, free cucullate, with a narrow, minutely serrulate-ciliate wing on the acute keel, empty, the next 2 also empty, concave, posticous and anticous, the posticous one embracing the other; upper scales c. 8-15, flat or slightly concave, acute, each with a single stamen in its axil. Anthers linear, shortly apiculate. Style continuous with the ovary; stigmas 2, short. Nut conical-ovoid, many-ribbed, seated on a large, somewhat turgid, hollow stipe, therefore seemingly consisting of a fertile apical part and a sterile basal part; exocarp thin, not fleshy.
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