Herbs, dioecious, perennial, caespitose or rhizomatous. Rhizomes with scarious scales. Cataphylls few or several, erect, enwrapping the culm bases. Culms all similar or dimorphic; fertile culms unbranched or branched, erect or flexuose, terete, striate, mostly glabrous or the lowest internode pubescent; rarely whole culm with appressed hairs; the lowest internode sometimes elongated and slender; vegetative culms when present shorter, more branched and more sinuous than fertile culms. Sheaths persistent, appressed or lax. Spathes similar to sheaths but smaller. Inflorescences: males and females mostly similar, the flowers mostly in erect spikelets (except the males pendulous in C. microcodon and sometimes in C. ornatus and C. capillaceus), terminal on culms or culm branches or several clustered in axils of upper sheaths or many in a much-branched inflorescence. Spikelets with several or many flowers or rarely female spikelets with a single flower. Glumes several or many, often the lower glumes sterile. Male flowers: tepals 5 or 6, glabrous or adaxially pubescent, 2 outer tepals keeled; stamens 3, anthers mostly exserted (except in C. microcodon); pistillode small or scarcely developed. Female flowers: tepals 5 or 6, mostly similar to males, staminodes usually present, loculi and style branches 2 or reduced to 1 (in C. leucoblepharus and usually in C. sphacelatus and C. dimorphus). Fruit a firm-walled capsule. Seeds striate with longitudinal lines of convex cells, or the lines exaggerated into sharp ridges of radially elongated cells; sometimes imprinted with a further striate pattern or network of narrow ridges between the convex cells. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma of 1–3 layers of short or elongated peg-cells, continuous or interrupted by pillar cells opposite outer vascular bundles, or (in C. fastigiatus) interrupted by greatly enlarged epidermal cells; central cavity mostly present.
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