Herb, dioecious, caespitose perennial, forming small to large (c. 45 cm across) tussocks; cluster roots present. Cataphylls glossy tan to brown, scarious, extending shortly up the culm and partly covering a pale woolly pubescence. Culms simple, slender, terete, 0.4–1.0 mm diam., 10–80 cm long, substriate, grey-green, the lower part of the culm often covered with pale, appressed fan-hairs; internodes 1.5–6.5 cm long. Sheaths c. 2–5 (–10) mm long, brown, mostly glabrous or with pale fan hairs, apex acute to truncate with a minute, caducous lamina to c. 0.5 mm long and an indistinct or absent membranous margin. Inflorescence: male spikelets erect to drooping on filiform pedicels, the pedicels whitish with a minute tomentum; female spikelets crowded in compact globular fascicles surrounded by closely overlapping scarious ovate-lanceolate, brown inflorescence bracts, the fascicles solitary and terminal or up to 4 (–15) at the upper nodes. Male spikelets narrow-ovoid to ovoid, 5–10 mm long, 2.0–4.5 mm wide, with 1–4 sterile lower glumes and 10–22 (–50) fertile upper glumes; glumes broad-ovate, cuspidate, 2–4 mm long with a mucro to 0.5 mm long, glabrous, brown, with narrow membranous margin. Female fascicles to 1.5 cm long and 1.5 cm wide, with c. 20–50 flowers, lower glumes with abortive flowers; glumes broad-ovate, 2.5–5.5 (–7.5) mm long with prominent, erect awns to c. 2 (–3) mm long. Male flowers: floral parts attached to a swollen base; tepals 5, linear-lanceolate, membranous, pale-brown; outer tepals keeled, 1.2–2.2 mm long; inner tepals flat, acuminate, shorter; stamens 3; filaments c. 0.3 mm long; anthers 0.8–1.1 mm long; pistillode absent. Female flowers: pedicellate, pedicels 0.5 mm long, pubescent with long white hairs; tepals 6, rigid, flat; outer tepals linear, 4–6 (–8) mm long, tapering into an erect awn, pale brown, abaxial surface covered with long silky-white hairs c. 0.5–1 mm long; inner tepals lanceolate, acute, 1.5–2.2 mm long, brown, fimbriate with brown or orange hairs; staminodes absent; style 3-branched, connate for c. 1.5 mm basally, the free portion wholly stigmatic. Nut trigonous, 1.0–1.4 mm long, 0.3–0.5 mm wide, smooth. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma of 2–4 layers of short cells, interrupted by pillar cells and partial sclerenchyma ridges opposite the outer vascular bundles, central cavity present.
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