Rhizome stout, covered with fibrous, brown remnants of old scales. Culms 10-60 cm tall, obscurely trigonous, smooth, basal leaf sheaths dark brown, split into fibers. Leaves shorter to longer than culm, blades 2-4 mm wide, flat, margins scabrid. Involucral bracts leafy, blade shorter than inflorescence, sheathed, sheath 5-18 mm. Spikes 4-6; peduncles erect, nearly enclosed in involucral bract sheath; terminal spike male, linear, 1-4 × ca. 0.2 cm, with peduncle 2-14 mm; lateral spikes female, oblong to cylindric, 12-40 × 2-4 mm, upper ones contiguous, lowermost spaced. Female glumes pale yellow-green, elliptic, 2.5-3 mm (excluding awn), green costa 3-veined, excurrent into a scabrid awn 2-4 mm, apex emarginate or acute. Utricles green, slightly longer than or nearly equaling glume, fusiform, 3.5-4 mm, membranous, puberulent, many veined, base attenuate into a short stipe 0.5-0.6 mm, apex attenuate into a slightly recurved beak, orifice obliquely truncate. Nutlet yellow-brown, tightly enveloped, fusiform, ca. 2.5 mm, with angles contracted at middle and faces excavated in both upper and lower parts, base with stipe ca. 1 mm, apex with short cylindric neck, neck shallowly concave at top, pale yellow, 0.4-0.5 mm; style base slightly thickened; stigmas 3. Fl. and fr. Apr-May.
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