Herb, dioecious, caespitose, perennial, with few or many culms from a narrow base; plants all female, setting abundant seed apomictically (parthenogenetic); male plants not known; cluster and sand-binding roots present. Cataphylls short, to 10 mm long, pale brown. Culms unbranched but with clusters of c. 40 branchlets at most nodes, erect, terete, minutely tuberculate, pubescent, bright green, to 40 cm high, 1.0–1.4 (–2.5) mm diam.; internodes 5–17, 1–6 cm long, often largely exposed and not hidden by branchlets; branchlets numerous, straight to curved or reflexed, slender, to 2 (–2.5) cm long, laterally flattened and rectangular or narrow-deltoid in section. Sheaths 7–13 mm long, sparsely pilose, often reflexed, lamina erect, 2–6 mm long. Spikelets (female) mostly sessile among the bases of the branchlets, numerous at each culm node, occasionally terminal on branchlets, ovoid, 4.0–6.0 mm long, 1-flowered; glumes 4–6, broad-ovate, obtuse, 1.7–3.0 mm long, straw-coloured, abaxial surface glabrous or pilose, mucro to 0.8 mm long; the uppermost glume imbricate and persistent around the fruit after dehiscence forming a rigid striate conical coat. Female flowers lacking tepals; ovary unilocular; the style unbranched, slender, red, the nut closely enwrapped with the striate uppermost glume. Nut ovoid, 1–1.8 mm long, with a short filiform apical beak; the pericarp soft and almost hyaline, with the brown seed visible through the pericarp; shed enclosed in the rigid striate innermost glume, with a short (0.7–1 mm) stipe below the glume. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma continuous, of a single layer of peg cells.
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