Annual with fibrous roots. Stems tufted, triquetrous, smooth, 3-20 cm by ½-1 mm. Leaves weak, flat, gradually acuminate, scabrid on the margins towards the top, 1-3½ mm wide. Inflorescence simple, anthelate but often contracted and head-like. Involucral bracts 3-6, obliquely erect to spreading, the longer ones much overtopping the inflorescence, up to 20 cm. Rays 3-6, with 5-20 spikelets, often very short, up to 6 cm. Spikes loose to rather dense, 8-12 by 8-10 mm; rachis 4-winged. Spikelets spicately arranged, obliquely to widely patent, ovate to oblong, strongly compressed, 4-7(-10)-flowered, 4-8 by 2-3 mm, falling entire; rachilla strongly flexuous. broadly winged, dis-articulating at the base; internodes c. 1 mm. Glumes membranous, broadly ovate or ovate, with more or less falcate, strongly 3-nerved, serrate-scabrous green keel, whitish or yellowish, hyaline, strongly 3-nerved sides reticulate by the wide cells, 2-3 by c. 2 mm (the more or less recurved, up to ½ mm long mucro excluded), c. ½ imbricate. Stamens 2; anthers elliptic to oblong, ½-1 mm. Stigmas 2. Nut biconvex, laterally compressed, suborbicular to elliptic, usually asymmetric, truncate to emarginate at the apex, not or hardly apiculate, castaneous to black, 1.1-1¾ by c. 1 mm; epidermal cells isodiametric.
Sandy and calcareous localities near the sea, at low altitudes; in Timor also more inland, on calcareous hills, up to 900 m.
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