Herb, dioecious, caespitose, perennial; cluster and sand-binding roots present. Cataphylls often conspicuous, appressed to culms, chestnut-brown, to 16 mm long. Culms unbranched but with clusters of 12–22 branchlets at most nodes, erect, terete or furrowed, glabrous to sparsely villous, minutely tuberculate, 5–30 cm long, 0.4–1.2 mm diam., internodes 3–8; branchlets straight or recurved, 1–3.5 cm long, laterally flattened and rectangular in cross section. Sheaths erect, lax, oblanceolate to obovate, 3–9 mm long, obtuse or truncate; lamina erect, 2–3.5 (–40) mm long. Male spikelets terminal on branchlets, borne singly or occasionally paired, narrow-ovoid, 4–4.5 mm long, 3–4-flowered; glumes 3 or 4, ovate-lanceolate, 2.2–3.5 mm long, membranous, pale brown, truncate to acuminate, glabrous or ciliate toward the apex, mucro to 1.0 mm long. Female spikelets on branchlets much shorter in fruiting stage than sterile branchlets, narrow-ovoid, 3.5–6.0 mm long, 1-flowered; glumes 2 or 3, ovate to lanceolate, acute, 1.8–4 mm long, light brown, margins pilose, abaxial surface glabrous or pilose toward the apex, mucro to 2.2 mm long. Male flowers: tepals 5 or 6, acute, linear-lanceolate, equal in length or inner tepals shorter, 2.5–4.0 mm long; anthers exserted, 1.5–2.3 mm long. Female flowers lacking tepals; ovary unilocular, style 1, mostly stigmatic. Nut ovoid, c. 1.5 mm long, dark brown with pale lateral lines, the pericarp thin and not rigid, on a short stipe 0.3 mm long, the style base persistent as a blunt apical beak 0.8 mm long. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma continuous, of 2 layers of peg cells.
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