Rhizome woody. Culms tufted, 25-70 cm tall, smooth, clothed at base with pale brown sheaths disintegrating into fibers. Leaves shorter than culm, blades gray-green, linear, 1.5-3 mm wide, flattish, slightly revolute, margins scabrous, apex acuminate. Involucral bracts leaflike, shorter than inflorescence, shortly sheathing. Spikes 4-8; upper 2-4 male, approximate, subclavate-cylindric, 1.4-1.8 cm; remaining spikes female, cylindric, 1-3 cm, lower 1 or 2 distant, sometimes lowest one branched, densely many flowered; peduncles 2-8 cm, scabrous. Female glumes dark brown or dark purple-red, oblong, 2.5-3.5 mm, margins very narrowly white hyaline, green 1-veined costa scabrous and excurrent into a mucro. Utricles dark brown above, pale below, longer than glume, oblong-elliptic, compressed trigonous, 4-5 mm, membranous, densely hirsute, faintly veined, margins green or pale, apex gradually attenuate into a short beak, orifice 2-toothed. Nutlets pale brown, loosely enveloped, oblong-trigonous, subcompressed, ca. 1.8 mm, base with a stipe ca. 0.7 mm; style erect, scabrous; stigmas 3. Fl. and fr. Jul-Aug.
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