Rhizome emitting slender stolons covered with brown or blackish scales. Stems erect or somewhat curved, solitary or tufted, slender, obtusely trigonous, smooth or scaberulous at the top, 3-40 (-60) cm by ½-1 mm, the base surrounded by the fibrous, reddish-black remains of old leaf-sheaths. Leaves basal, rarely 1 higher on the stem, rigid, shorter than the stems, linear, long-attenuate, flat or with revolute margins, conspicuously keeled, scabrid on the margins and keel in the upper part, 2-4 mm wide; lower sheaths fuscous to blackish-purple. Inflorescence a decompound, narrow panicle interrupted at the base, 10-20(-30) cm long; partial panicles 3-14, at 2-8 nodes, single and binate, oblong, dense, 1-5 cm long, upper ones approximate, lower on slender, erect, scabrid, up to 8 cm long peduncles exserted from the sheaths. Lower bracts foliaceous, not or scarcely overtopping the inflorescence, long-sheathing, upper ones much reduced; bracteoles glume-like, hispidulous, awned; rachis hispid. Spikelets androgynous, suberect or appressed, oblong, 4-10 by 2-272 mm, the male part inconspicuous, mostly shorter than the female part. Glumes ovate, membranous, acute, muticous or minutely mucronulate, rarely awned, slenderly nerved, glabrous or the lower ones minutely hispidulous, blackish-fuscous with white-hyaline margins, 2-3 mm long. Utricles trigonous, not inflated, ellipsoid, narrowed at both ends, suberect, membranous, straight, obscurely nerved (only 2 nerves more prominent), glabrous at the base, otherwise densely scabrid-pubescent, gradually narrowed into the beak, blackish-fuscous, 2¾-4.5 by 4/10-1.2 mm; beak straight, compressed, deeply bidentate (teeth ½-2/3 mm) but often originally oblique, scabrid on the margins, 1-1¾ mm long, the mouth with whitish-hyaline margins. Nut triquetrous with shallowly concave sides, ellipsoid or broadly ellipsoid, stipitate, conspicuously apiculate, stramineous-brown, 1.5-l.6 by 4.2-1 mm. Style scabrid, not or scarcely incrassate at the base. Stigmas 3.
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