Culms obtusely trigonous, to 35 cm × 1.5 mm, scabrous distally. Leaves: sheaths with blades, to 2 cm, rough, fronts spotted red-brown apically, ladder-fibrillose, orifice red-brown, slightly prolonged beyond blade and sheath, leathery; blades 35 cm × 3 mm, margins rough; proximal blades blue-green, densely papillose. Inflorescences to 10 cm; peduncle of staminate spike to 2.5 cm; proximal bracts about equaling inflorescences; staminate spikes 1–3; pistillate spikes 2–3, to 4 cm × 4 mm. Scales red-brown with green midrib and hyaline margins, obovate, apex obtuse or with short mucro to 0.3 mm, equaling perigynia and narrower. Anthers to 2.5 mm. Perigynia ascending, green, spotted red-brown on distal 1/2, sessile, 2.2 × 1.4 mm; beak orifice purple-brown, glabrous. Achenes brown, 1.6 × 1.1 mm.
Vigorously colonial by creeping rhizomes, 2–6 dm; main lvs 2–5 mm wide; terminal spike staminate, 1–3 cm, long-peduncled; pistillate spikes 1–3 cm; pistillate scales ovate, with broad, pale midvein and brown sides, acute to short-acuminate or mucronulate; perigynia elliptic-obovoid, minutely hispidulous distally, nerveless or nearly so, even the lateral ribs inconspicuous, abruptly narrowed to a minute beak; achene rounded-trigonous, bent-apiculate. Native of Eurasia and n. Afr., intr. in fields and meadows from N.S. and Que. to Ont. and N.Y. (C. glauca)