Stems 0.5–2 dm, smooth, scattered on long, slender, brownish, sympodial rhizomes; lvs basally disposed, 0.3–1.5 mm wide, often involute or canaliculate; spikes sessile, normally androgynous, inconspicuously bracteate, 4–9 mm, closely aggregated into an ovoid or oblong-cylindric head 8–17 mm; perigynia fusiform-elliptic to broadly elliptic-ovate, 2.6–3.3(–3.5) mm, planoconvex, sharp-edged and ± serrulate distally, ± evidently several-nerved dorsally and sometimes also ventrally, or virtually nerveless, with an evident beak 0.5–1 mm; achene lenticular. Open, often grassy places; irregularly circumboreal, in Amer. from Minn., Io., and Kans. w. across the plains and irregularly in the cordillera n. to Alas.; intr. along railways in Mo. and Ill. (C. eleocharis, the Amer. pls)
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