Perennial with short rhizome (according to BENTHAM l.c. rhizome thick, horizontal or creeping). Stems rigid, obtusely trigonous, smooth, leafy in the lower half, 30-60(-80) cm by up to 3 mm. Leaves coriaceous, canaliculate or conduplicate, septate-nodulose, gradually acuminate, scabrid at the top, 3-4 mm wide; lower sheaths spongy, strongly septate-nodulose, fuscous to brown. Inflorescence compound or subdecompound, loose, up to 13 cm across. Involucral bracts 3-4, patent, the lower ones much overtopping the inflorescence, up to 70 cm. Primary rays 5-8, obliquely patent, slender, up to 8 cm, secondary ones up to 2½ mm, tertiary when present ½-1½ cm. Spikes contracted into dense, globular or ovoid clusters, with many spikelets, 4-7 mm Ø. Spikelets squarrose, ovate, rather acute, turgid, falling off as a whole, stramineous to brown, 4-8-flowered, 2-3 by 2 mm; rachilla straight, wingless or nearly so; internodes c. 2/5 mm. Glumes chartaceous, with patulous top, elliptic, obtuse, hardly keeled, minutely mucronulate just below the apex, (7-)9-11-nerved, ½ imbricate, stramineous to brown, c. 2 by 1 mm. Stamens 3; anthers linear, c. ½ mm, the connective produced into an ovate, c. 1/10 mm long appendage. Style 1-1½ mm; stigmas 3, about as long as the style. Nut trigonous, oblong, about as long as the subtending glume, abruptly apiculate, brown, 1¾ by ½ mm.
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