Herb, perennial, monoecious, rhizomatous, forming dense patches of culms or more diffuse patches to 2 m across; sand-binding and cluster roots present. Rhizome 3–4 mm diam., with a pale woolly pubescence, partially covered by imbricate, scarious, glabrous, broad-cuneate, obtuse, pale or brown scales 3–5 mm long. Culms erect or ascending, terete to furrowed, 15–60 cm long, c. 1 mm diam., green, glabrous, smooth to slightly rugose, simple or sparsely branched; internodes 4–8, 3–13 cm long. Sheaths ovate, 7–15 mm long, 3–4 mm wide, broadest at or above the middle, lax, erect or slightly spreading, shortly ciliate, truncate, mostly dark red-brown toward the base, paler in the upper half; lamina small, erect, subulate or terete, 0.6–2.1 mm long. Spathes mostly 2 surrounding each male spikelet, ovate, 4–6 mm long, apex rounded or truncate with a short lamina. Male spikelets solitary and terminal on culms, ovoid to narrow-ovoid, 7–10 mm long, 2.5–4.0 mm wide, erect; glumes 8–16, all fertile, oblong, obtuse, mucronate, 3.5–6.0 mm long, ciliate, light-brown. Female spikelets solitary in the axils of lower sheaths, on the same culms as the terminal male spikelets, narrow-ovoid, 10–11 mm long; glumes 2 or 3, similar to males but longer. Male flowers: tepals thin, hyaline, glabrous, 3.5–5.0 mm long; outer tepals oblanceolate to narrow-elliptic, acute, keeled; inner tepals almost linear; filaments 4.7–5.6 mm long; anthers 2.0–2.5 mm long, pistillode minute. Female flowers: tepals hyaline, linear, 5–7 mm long; inner tepals usually shorter; staminodes minute; style single,7–10 mm long, mostly stigmatic. Nut obloid, smooth, dark-brown, obtuse at the ends, 3.5–6.3 mm long, c. 1.8 mm wide, on a short, broad, whitish stipe, with an indistinct pale lateral line marking the margins of the fertile carpel, shed with persistent tepals. Seed ovoid, orange-brown, glossy, 2.5–4 mm long. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma not interrupted, of 1 layer of elongated peg-cells, pillar and protective cells absent, but inward-projecting epidermal cells partially lining the substomatal cavities, epidermal cells with slightly sinuous radial walls thickened on outer wall and outer part of radial walls, radially elongated epidermal cells forming mounds on the culm surface; culms solid with vascular bundles in the central ground tissue.
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