Annual with fibrous, yellowish roots. Stems very slender, tufted, weak to rather stiff, strongly compressed, triquetrous at the top, smooth, 10-35 cm by 1(-2) mm. Leaves few, flat, weak, gradually acuminate, smooth, slightly septate-nodulose, 2-3 mm wide; lower sheaths scarious, stramineous or cinnamomeous, bladeless or shortly laminate. Inflorescence simple or subcompound, very loose. Involucral bracts (1-)2, erect or suberect, usually much shorter than the inflorescence, rarely over-topping it, the longest 3-10(-17)cm. Primary rays 3-5, suberect, slender, often filiform, one of them usually strongly elongated, up to 25 cm. Spikelets digitately arranged, (1-)2-6 together, spreading or reflexed, oblong to oblong-linear, subobtuse, strongly compressed, 10-30-flowered, 4-15 by c. 3 mm; rachilla nearly straight, wingless, persistent; internodes c. ½ mm. Glumes thinly membranous, finally patulous, ovate, acute or apiculate, cellular-reticulate, with strong midrib and a faint nerve in the centre of either side, 1½-1¾ by c. 1½ mm, when young c. ⅓ overlapping; centre (c. ½ the width) green, sides pale stramineous, hyaline, keel slightly arcuate with somewhat excurved top, narrowly winged, not serrulate. Stamens 2; anthers elliptic, c. ¼ mm. Stigmas 3. Nut equally trigonous, ellipsoid to slightly obovoid, ⅓-½ as long as the subtending glume, broadly stipitate, not or hardly apiculate, minutely tuberculate, pale brown, c. ¾ by ½ mm.
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