Herb, dioecious, perennial, forming dense multi-stemmed tussocks to 20 (–40) cm across at base. Rhizomes ascending or shortly horizontal, to c. 5 cm long or more, 1.5–3 mm diam.; scales appressed, scarious, brown, covering a brown woolly pubescence. Culms often dimorphic; fertile culms erect, terete, 35–80 cm long, 0.6–1.5 mm diam., striate, green, glabrous, unbranched or branched, branches + erect; internodes numerous, 5–10 cm long; vegetative culms short, branched, sinuous. Sheaths initially appressed, becoming lax with age, 0.5–2.5 cm long, brown, striate; apex acute, often pilose with long hairs; lamina reduced or absent. Inflorescence 20–35 cm long, with numerous spikelets on long ± erect branches; spikelets terminal or shortly pedicellate. Male spikelets narrow-ovoid, 6–10 mm long, 1.5–4.0 mm wide. Female spikelets narrow when young, becoming ovoid, 9–22 mm long, 1.0–1.8 mm wide. Male glumes: 1 sterile lower and 7–14 fertile upper glumes, ovate, brown, 2.8–5 mm long; apex ciliate; mucro to 1.7 mm long. Female glumes: 1 sterile lower glume and 1–4 fertile upper glumes, brown, glabrous, 4.5–10 mm long; mucro occasionally reflexed, 1.5–2.8 mm long. Male flowers: tepals 6, narrow-lanceolate, obtuse to acute, light-brown, thin-textured; outer tepals 2.8–4.3 mm long, keeled, pubescent; inner tepals 2.5–3.7 mm long, flat; stamens 3; filaments 2.6–3.5 mm long; anthers 1.5–2.0 mm long. Female flowers: tepals 6, similar to males or slightly longer; staminodes 3; styles 2, scarcely united at the base, stigmatic almost to the base. Capsule 2.0–2.2 mm long, c. 1 mm wide, brown. Seed cylindrical, c. 1.4 mm long, dark with well separated white ridges, and a fine network of narrow ridges between the longitudinal ridges. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma interrupted by pillar cells opposite outer vascular bundles.
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