Herb, dioecious, rhizomatous perennial, forming diffuse patches to 30 cm across. Rhizomes to 25 cm long, 2.5–4.0 mm diam.; scales appressed, scarious, red-brown, partly covering a pale woolly pubescence. Cataphylls pale, appressed, crowded. Culms often dimorphic, spaced 0.5–1.5 cm apart on the rhizome, fertile culms terete, mostly erect, straight or flexuose, 15–40 cm long, 0.8–1.2 mm diam., prominently striate, branched; branches short and usually barren; internodes numerous, 2.5–8.0 cm long; vegetative culms short and flexuose. Sheaths scarious, finely striate, lax, open, oblanceolate, 1–2 cm long, often apically pilose with long white hairs when young, green-brown, becoming weathered with age, apex obtuse; lamina to 4 mm long, membranous margin narrow, smooth, weathering away. Inflorescence of 2–4 spikelets, terminal or axillary; males often on slender, erect lateral branches; females mostly at upper culm nodes. Male and female spikelets similar, ovoid, 9–13 mm long, 2.5–4.0 mm wide. Male glumes 8–20 (–40), all fertile, broad-lanceolate, scarious, brown, acute, apex shortly ciliate, 4–6 mm long; mucro 1.0–2.5 mm long. Female glumes about 8, all fertile, similar to males, 4.5–6.5 mm long; mucro 0.5–2.0 mm long. Male flowers: tepals (5 or) 6, narrow-lanceolate to lanceolate, acute to acuminate, 3–4.5 mm long, scarious, light brown; 2 outer tepals keeled, pubescent along keel; 1 median outer tepal flat; inner tepals flat; stamens 3; filaments 3.4–3.8 mm long; anthers c. 2 mm long. Female flowers: tepals similar to males; styles 2, shortly connate at the base, almost wholly stigmatic. Capsule c. 2–2.5 mm long. Seed ovoid, c. 1.2 mm long, dark brown with white longitudinal ridges of convex cells, and a fine network of narrow ridges between the main ridges. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma interrupted by pillar cells opposite outer vascular bundles.
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