Herbs, dioecious, perennial, caespitose; cluster roots mostly present. Cataphylls glossy, scarious, covering a brown woolly pubescence. Culms simple, striate, with appressed ‘fan hairs’ and with few persistent appressed sheaths. Inflorescence: males and females very different, male spikelets erect or mostly pendulous, few or many on slender branches at several or many upper nodes. Female inflorescence of compact fascicles or heads consisting of many crowded spikelets each with 3–5 flowers, the heads terminal or at several upper nodes, surrounded by scarious spathes; the flowers on very short pedicels with a small floral bract. Male flowers: stamens often on a swollen base; tepals 5, membranous; stamens 3, anthers not exserted. Female flowers with 6 tepals; outer tepals, rigid, acute or awned; ovary 1-locular; style unbranched or 3-branched with the lower half connate. Fruit a small, thin-walled nut, shed with the enclosing glume and persistent perianth which bears long hairs and elongated hairy awns. Seeds smooth, with an indistinct cell pattern. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma of 2–4 layers of short cells, interrupted by pillar cells and partial sclerenchyma ridges opposite the outer vascular bundles, protective cells absent, central cavity present or absent.
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