Rhizome short, woody, forming large clumps. Stems densely tufted, stoutish, erect, triquetrous, scabrid on the angles at the top, 30-110 cm by up to 4 mm below, surrounded below the leaves by shining brown to blackish red sheaths splitting into herring-bone-shaped fibres. Leaves basal and subbasal, often 1-2 higher up the stem, stiff, subcoriaceous, flat but margins often revolute, scabrid on the nerves, long-attenuate, greyish or glaucous-green, much overtopping the stems, 3-12 mm wide. Bracts not sheathing, 2-3 lower ones foliaceous, semi-amplexicaul and blackish red auricled at the base, middle ones subfoliaceous, upper ones reduced to long-awned glumes. Spikelets (6-)10-15(-50), single or binate at the nodes, upper approximate, fastigiate, subsessile, lower more distant, on capillary, scabrid, up to 5 cm long peduncles, more or less nodding, all androgynous or 1(-2) at the base of the uppermost much smaller and wholly male, exceptionally terminal spikelet wholly male, linear-cylindric, (3-)6-13 cm long, very densely flowered, the male part occupying the upper ¼-½, 1-3 mm thick, the female part 4-6 mm thick. Glumes ovate or oblong-ovate, obtusish, purplish black, with wide, 3-nerved, greenish central stripe and very narrow hyaline margins, 1.5-2(-2.5) mm long, excurrent in a hispid, short mucro sometimes 1 mm long. Utricles elliptic or obovate-elliptic, biconvex or plano-convex, multinerved, longer than (rarely about as long as) the glumes, finally divaricate, not stipitate, somewhat acuminate at the top but scarcely beaked, often puncticulate, sometimes minutely and sparsely setulose at the truncate or emarginate mouth, 1.5-2.5 by 9/10-1.25 mm. Nut elliptic or obovate, biconvex, brown, 1.5-1.75 by 0.8-1.25 mm. Style short, not thickened towards the base. Stigmas 2.
On slopes in open places, on open banks of streams, in peaty alpine grasslands, and in mossy forest; on Mt Gedeh at 1600-1800 m, in the Philippines at 1500-2200 m (once collected at 400 m), on Mt Kinabalu at 1200 m, in New Guinea between 800 and 3800 m.
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