Herb, dioecious, caespitose, perennial, forming small clumps to 15 cm diam. or circular patches to 30 cm diam., sometimes dying in the centre and forming spreading rings to 50 cm diam.; cluster and sand-binding roots present. Cataphylls narrow-lanceolate, to 2 cm long, woolly with white hairs but becoming glabrous. Culms erect or spreading, terete or almost so, often flexuose and tangled above the first internode, pubescent with dense short white, branched multicellular hairs, appearing grey-green or white, to 15 cm long, 0.5–1.0 mm diam.; internodes 2–4, to 10 cm long. Sheaths 1–3, persistent, loosely appressed, 0.5–1.5 cm long, narrow-ovate, ± acute, red-to pale-brown, sparsely pilose; lamina erect, c. 1 mm long. Male spikelets 1–3 per culm, terminal or in the axil of an upper sheath (a spathe), 2–7-flowered, elliptic, c. 4.0–5.0 mm long; subtending spathe longer than spikelet, with a mucro 1.0–1.5 mm long; glumes 2–7, ovate-lanceolate, acute, 3.0–3.5 mm long, pale brown with a membranous margin, glabrous or sparsely pubescent with short pilose hairs; mucro c. 0.8 mm long. Female spikelets: 2 or 3 per culm, each 1-flowered and terminal or axillary; outer glumes with a dark rigid mucro, inner glumes membranous, narrow-ellipsoid, 5.0–7.0 mm long; subtending bract longer and almost completely enclosing spikelet; glumes 6 or 7, narrow-ovate, acute, 3.1–4.2 mm long, brown with membranous margins, abaxial surface partially pilose; mucro to 2.2 mm long; the 2 uppermost glumes reduced. Male flowers: tepals membranous, lowest flower in spikelet with 5 tepals, upper flowers with 2 tepals, the tepals obtuse; outer tepals narrow-lanceolate, 2.5–3.3 mm long; inner tepals linear, often twisted, 2.0–2.6 mm long; stamens 3, anthers exserted 1.2–1.4 mm long. Female flowers lacking tepals, ovary unilocular, style 1. Nut pale brown, c. 2.8 mm long including the short stipe and short truncate stylar beak, the pericarp thin and not rigid. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma continuous, of 1 layer of elongated peg cells.
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