Herb, dioecious, caespitose, perennial, forming large, dense or rather open, many-stemmed tussocks, 25–120 cm across; sand-binding roots present. Rhizome pubescent with white or pale tan hairs; scales ovate, c. 0.5 cm long, scarious or hyaline, glabrous, somewhat glossy. Cataphylls short, 1–2 cm long, glabrous. Culms erect or spreading, terete, 35–120 cm high, 1–1.5 mm diam., finely tuberculate, bright green, glabrous; internodes numerous, 1.5–4.5 cm long; repeatedly branched, the branches slender, highly flexuose. Sheaths appressed, oblong, 7.5–12 mm long, red-brown, often with soft, white axillary hairs projecting beyond the sheath; apex obtuse or truncate; lamina 1.0–2.5 mm long. Spikelets usually solitary, sessile in axils of upper nodes or mostly terminal on branches; glumes glabrous, tan-brown. Male spikelets narrow-cylindrical, 5–8.5 mm long; glumes 1.4–3.0 mm long, 3–5 lower glumes rigid, broad-ovate, apex obtuse to obcordate, with a black mucro to 1.5 mm long; upper glumes 15–22, blunt, hyaline, ovate to oblong, not mucronate, only c. 5 uppermost subtending flowers. Female spikelets narrow ovoid-cylindrical, 6.5–8.5 mm long, 1-flowered; glumes 5–7, narrow-ovate, acute, 1.8–5.0 mm long; mucro rigid, black, 1.1–2.5 mm long. Male flowers: tepals 5, hyaline, filiform, 1.6–2.5 mm long; filaments c. 3 mm long; anthers exserted, c. 1 mm long. Female flowers: tepals (4)5, hyaline, narrow-elliptic, obtuse, shed with the nut, 4.0–5.5 mm long; ovary unilocular, style 1, mostly stigmatic. Nut narrow-oblong, 3–4.5 mm long, pale brown, with a short (c. 0.5 mm) thick stipe above the tepals and a short blunt apical beak. Seed oblong, c. 2.5 mm long. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma continuous; vessels scattered in the central ground tissue as well as in an outer ring.
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