Annuals. Culms 10-40 cm, slightly erect or sprawling, 3-angled, glabrous. Veins of leaf blades and bracts purple, fine. Leaf sheath with narrow wings but apically broader; ligule absent; leaf blade linear, 1-4 cm × 1.5-3 mm, apex acute to acuminate. Involucral bracts and bractlets leaflike or glumelike; leaflike bracts green, 3-10 mm, papery. Inflorescence a capitate cyme, 1 or 2 at each node. Male spikelets with 3 glumes and 1 or 2 flowers; glumes scarious. Female spikelets turbinate, 1.2-1.5 × ca. 1.2 mm; glumes greenish yellow and often with pale red spots, ovate to oblong, ca. 1.2 mm, membranous, midvein prominent, lateral veins faint, apex entire (not 3-lobed) and mucronate. Disk adnate to base of nutlet, obscurely 3-sided. Nutlet depressed globose, ca. 1 mm in diam., with 3 longitudinal ribs and square reticulation between ribs, apex hispid. Fl. and fr. autumn and winter.
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