Dioecious caespitose perennial, glabrous except for dense brown hairs in axils of cataphylls; forming small dense clumps of many culms, with short (2–5 cm) ascending rhizomes covered by brown, lanceolate scales 0.5–1.5 cm long. Cataphylls numerous, closely overlapping, persistent, glossy dark brown or straw-coloured, ovate-cuneate; outer cataphylls c. 1 cm long; inner cataphylls 3–6 cm long, with a short subulate lamina to c. 3 mm long. Culms erect or recurved, 10–30 cm long, 1.2–2.0 mm wide, yellowish green, finely tuberculate. Sheaths when rarely present 1–1.8 cm long, loosely appressed, pale brown, striate, with a short subulate lamina 2–3 mm long. Inflorescence subtended by a green to straw-coloured spathe, 0.6–1.0 cm long, with a subulate tip 1.5–2.5 mm long. Male inflorescence of 1–3 ovoid spikelets, 7–12 mm long, 6–9 mm wide; lower 2 glumes sterile; upper c. 70 glumes fertile, lanceolate, acuminate, 5–6 mm long, golden-brown, smooth, scarious, glabrous, without a mucro or awn. Female spikelets narrow-ovoid, 13–15 mm long, 2.0–3.8 mm wide, 1–3-flowered; glumes 3–5, rigid, broad-lanceolate, mucronate, 6–7 mm long; mucro erect, 2.5–3.2 mm long, dark brown, glossy, glabrous. Male flowers: outer tepals aristate, 3.7–4.5 mm long; inner tepals lanceolate, 2.2–3.3 mm long; filaments 3.0–4.5 mm long; anthers 1.6–2.1 mm long. Female flowers: outer tepals keeled, 5.5–7.0 mm long; inner tepals lanceolate, 5.0–5.5 mm long. Nut 3.5–4 mm long, c. 2 mm wide, the style base forming an asymmetric broad conical beak. Seed ellipsoid, c. 1.8 mm long, chestnut-brown, glossy, smooth, with an irregular pattern of subangular isodiametric cells. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma not interrupted, of 1 layer of elongated peg-cells, inward-projecting epidermal cells partially lining the substomatal cavities, epidermal cells with radial walls strongly thickened on the outer wall and outer part of radial walls, radially elongated epidermal cells forming mounds on the culm surface; culm with vascular bundles in central ground tissue and no central cavity.
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