Herb, dioecious, perennial, caespitose, forming small, dense, many-culmed tussocks; cluster and sand-binding roots present. Cataphylls red-brown, to 14 mm long. Culms numerous, erect, terete, glabrous or pubescent, minutely tuberculate, 7–40 cm high, 0.5–1.0 mm diam., internodes numerous; male plants with culms mostly branched only at lower nodes, straight and erect above; females more sinuous, with a short and strongly recurved branchlet at most upper nodes. Sheaths 2.5–6.5 mm long, appressed or lax, acute, brown. Male spikelets borne singly at 5–10 upper nodes, sessile on culms or occasionally terminal on lateral branches, ovoid, 5.0–7.0 mm long, 6–18-flowered; glumes 6–18, oblanceolate, aristate, 1.7–2.9 mm long, light brown, glabrous; mucro 0.5–1.2 mm long. Female spikelets mostly terminal on lateral branchlets at 1–10 upper nodes, rarely sessile at culm nodes, ellipsoid, 4.5–8.8 mm long, 1–4-flowered; glumes 4–9, ovate, acute, 2.5–5.0 mm long, light brown, shortly ciliate toward the apex, the uppermost 1–4 glumes fertile; mucro 0.6–1.6 mm long. Male flowers: tepals 5, acute, equal in length or inner tepals shorter, 1.5–2.4 mm long; anthers 1.0–1.3 mm long. Female flowers lacking tepals; ovary unilocular, style 1, mostly stigmatic. Nut ellipsoid, 1–2 mm long, finely rugose, brown with pale lateral lines, stipitate, the style base persistent as a short blunt apical beak. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma continuous, of 2 layers of peg cells.
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