Rhizome stout, woody, emitting long, stout stolons. Stems stout, erect, triquetrous, smooth or sc'abrid on the angles above, 50-110 cm by up to 5 mm below. Leaves basal and subbasal, much exceeding the stems, flat, stiffish, long-acuminate, scabrous on the margins towards the top, the broader ones 1-2 cm wide; sheaths stramineous, somewhat spongy, deeply concave in front, ligule elongate, up to 5 cm long. Spikelets 4-9 (according to Boott up to 14), erect, long-cylindric, upper approximate, fastigiate, lower somewhat distant; terminal spikelet male (often with some female flowers at the base), peduncled, 5.5-16 cm long and 5 mm thick, often a second, shorter male spikelet added at the base, remaining spikelets female (but usually with short male apices), very densely flowered, sessile but lowest sometimes distinctly peduncled, up to 16 cm by 5-8 mm. Lower bracts foliaceous, much overtopping the inflorescence, semi-amplexicaul by dark auricles, upper shorter, usually none sheathing (lowest sometimes more or less sheathing). Glumes oblong, obtuse, vinaceous to dark red with 3-nerved, green, 1.25-3 mm long, central stripe excurrent in a scabrid awn ¾-3 mm long. Utricles obovoid or ellipsoid, membranous, much inflated when ripe, rugose when dry, slenderly plurinerved, patent or reflexed, glabrous, olive-brown, 0.75-4⅔ by 1.5-2 mm, suddenly narrowed into a short, conic, often recurved, minutely bidenticulate beak ciliate at the mouth. Nut obovoid or oblong-obovoid, triquetrous, beaked, stramineous to yellowish, c. 2 by 1 mm. Style straight, not or hardly thickened at the base. Stigmas 3.
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