Rhizome shortly creeping, woody, covered with brown, readily fraying scales. Stems very slender, erect but often curved, triquetrous, slightly incrassate just below the inflorescence, smooth, or slightly scabrid at the top, surrounded below the leaves by a few, bladeless, brown sheaths, 10-25 cm by 0.5-1 mm. Leaves basal, up to twice as long as the stems, rigid, flat, with revolute margins when dry, long-attenuate, greyish green, scabrid in the apical part, 2-5 mm wide. Inflorescence either a single head of 1-3 sessile spikelets, ovoid or oblong-ovoid, 1-2 cm long, or spiciform with 1-2 additional subsessile heads near the base of the stem in the axil of a leafy bract very similar to and as long as the leaves. Bracts not sheathing, amplexi-caul by ciliolate auricles, the lowest of the terminal head foliaceous, 5-10(-25) cm long. Spikelets androgynous, the male part longer than the female but finally hidden by the fully developed utricles, 6-10 by 5-7 mm. Glumes ovate-lanceolate, obtuse or acutish, membranous, strongly nerved, glabrous, stramineous with white margins, 3-4.25 mm long, the midnerve excurrent in a minutely scabrid, 1-1¾ mm long awn. Utricles trigonous, ellipsoid-rhomboid, subcoriaceous, suberect, strongly many-nerved, distinctly winged almost all round, scabrid-margined, gradually narrowed into the beak, glabrous, stramineous or brownish, 6-8 by 2-2⅔ mm (wings included); beak compressed, sub-conical, bidenticulate, with oblique mouth, 3 mm long. Nut triquetrous, rhomboid-ellipsoid, sessile, livid, 3 by 1¾-2 mm. Style-base pyramidally thickened, persistent on the nut. Stigmas 3.
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