Annual with fibrous roots. Stems slender, tufted, triquetrous, smooth, up to 30 cm by ½-1 mm. Leaves few, shorter than the stems, flat, flaccid, very gradually acuminate, scabrid towards the top, grass-green or light green, 1-3 mm wide; lower sheaths bladeless, membranous, stramineous, purplish striate. Inflorescence simple, loose. Involucral bracts 3-6(-9), obliquely patent, the lowest as long as or slightly overtopping the inflorescence, up to 12 cm. Spikes consisting of 1 erect terminal spikelet and 1-3(-6) ultimately horizontally spreading lateral ones, often some reduced to a single spikelet; rachis glabrous. Spikelets spicately arranged, linear, acute, slightly compressed, subquadrangular (i.e. rhomboidal in cross-section), 6-16-flowered, 1-2½ cm by c.1½ mm; rachilla flexuous, broadly winged; persistent; internodes c. 1½ mm; wings rather firm, soon caducous, stramineous, often brownish lineolate. Glumes appressed or somewhat recurved at the top, remote (hardly overlapping the next higher one), ovate or elliptic, acutish, 7-9-nerved, 3-3½ by c. 2 mm, the slightly excurrent midnerve setulose at the top; keel broad, green, sides stramineous to brownish, purplish lineolate, margins hyaline. Stamens 3; anthers oblong, ½-¾ mm. Stigmas 3. Nut trigonous, turbinate-obovoid, truncate or somewhat depressed at the apex, broadly stipitate, brown to blackish, 1¼-1½ by 4/5-1.2 mm.
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A tussocky, annual herb, up to 500 mm tall. Inflorescence of 1 sessile and 2-10 stalked spikelet clusters. Glumes 3-4 mm long, light brown.
Rare, caespitose annual about 20 cm. high
Few, subquadrangular greenish spikelets
Flaccid leaves and bracts
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