Rhizome slender, long creeping. Culms 20-25 cm tall, erect, obtusely trigonous, slender, smooth, clothed with pale brown sheaths at base. Leaves shorter than culm, blades gray-green, linear, 1-2 mm wide, plicate or involute, slightly curved, margins scabrous. Involucral bracts glumelike, setaceous at base. Inflorescence capitate, dense, oblong-ovate or subglobose, 2-3 × 1.2-2 cm; spikes 3-6, androgynous. Female glumes brown, broadly ovate-lanceolate, 3-4 × ca. 2 mm, 1-veined, margins broadly white hyaline, apex acute. Utricles yellowish ferruginous, much longer and broader than glume, ovate when young, strongly inflated bulliform to globose or elliptic at maturity, 1-1.5 × 0.5-1 cm, membranous, yellowish orange or reddish brownish veined, base rounded, slightly shortly stipitate, apex abruptly contracted into a short beak, orifice white hyaline, 2-toothed. Nutlets yellowish, very loosely enveloped, elliptic or suborbicular, flat, ca. 3 × 2 mm, sometimes with rudimentary rachis at base; style base thickened; stigmas 2. Fl. and fr. Apr-May.
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