Rhizome woody, emitting strong stolons covered with lanceolate, fuscous sheaths. Stems rigid, erect, rather acutely trigonous, smooth, 100-250 cm by 3-5 mm, surrounded at the base by a few reddish brown, bladeless sheaths. Leaves at regular intervals throughout the stem, shorter than the stem, stiff, flattish, or with revolute margins when dry, smooth, or scabrid on the margins, sparsely to rather densely covered with long, pale hairs beneath, 4-8 mm wide; sheaths smooth, hairy above, membranous in front, with concave mouth; ligule elongate, hairy, ferrugineous. Inflorescence a compound, interrupted panicle, 25-40 cm long; secondary panicles 5-8, erect, broadly pyramidal, single at the nodes, or lowest sometimes binate, rather loose, upper approximate, lower distant, on exserted, hispidulous peduncles with patent branches. Lower bracts foliaceous, slightly exceeding the inflorescence, long-sheathing, upper reduced. Spikelets usually unisexual; female ones numerous, shortly cylindrical, very dense, 5-8 by 3.5-4.5 mm, sometimes with a few female flowers at the top; male ones inconspicuous, few, lateral, 1-5 just below some of the terminal female spikelets, sessile, ellipsoid, 4 by 1-2 mm. Cladoprophylls of branches and peduncles utriculiform, hairy, those of the male spikelets sometimes enclosing a female flower, those of the partial panicles ocreiform. Glumes thinly membranous, ovate-lanceolate, acute, hairy, slenderly nerved, with narrow whitish-hyaline margins and shortly excurrent midnerve, 2-2¾ mm long, in ripe spikelets almost completely hidden among the utricles. Utricles obtusely trigonous, obovoid, not or but slightly inflated, horizontally patent, straight, glabrous or very sparsely hispidulous, slenderly nerved (2 nerves more prominent), fuscous, densely reddish glandular-spotted, 1.25-1⅔ by c. 1 mm, subabruptly narrowed into a very short, bidenticulate beak. Nut triquetrous, obovoid, filling the utricle, sessile, brown, whitish papillose, 1.2-1 1/3 by 9/10-1 mm. Style-base thickened. Stigmas 3.
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