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Annual. Stems very slender, tufted, often curved, angular, 4-5-ribbed, puncticulate, light green, 5-20 cm by 1/5-⅓ mm. Sheaths reddish at the base, whitish-scarious at the apex. Spikelet ovoid, obtuse, more or less compressed, loosely few-(3-10)-flowered, 2-5 by 1½-2½ mm. Glumes membranous, spreading in fruit, ovate, obtuse, keeled, with distinct greenish midnerve, purplish sides, and scarious margins, 2¼-3¼ by. 1½-2 mm, the lower ones almost distichous. Bristles 6, rather delicate, unequal, the longest usually longer than the nut, retrorsely scabrous, whitish to yellowish, occasionally reduced to obsolete. Stamens 3; anthers linear, minutely apiculate, ½-¾ Style 3-fid. Nut equilaterally triquetrous, urceolate, truncate or slightly convex at the apex, conspicuously cancellate, costulate on the angles, dull stramineous to fumose, 9/10 by 7/10-9/10 mm; epidermal cells conspicuous, deeply pitted, hexagonal or roundish, in 6-10 vertical series on each face. Style-base pyramidal, in the Malesian specimens usually much depressed and blunt at the apex, c. ⅓ as high as and equal in width to the nut, 3-lobed, the lobes decurrent on the angles of the nut.
Annuals. Roots fibrous. Rhizomes and stolons absent. Culms often recurved, tufted, 2-16 cm tall or rarely more, filiform, soft, 5-or nearly 4-angled. Leaf sheaths 1 or 2, pale red, tubular, 2-12 mm; basalmost sheath bladeless; cauline sheaths usually with a glumelike blade at apex. Spikelet purplish red, ovoid, ca. 4 × 2 mm, slightly compressed, few flowered, sometimes proliferous. Basalmost glume empty, subelliptic, amplexicaul for whole spikelet base; fertile glumes green, broadly ovate, 2.8-3 × 1.8-2 mm, herbaceous, with a median keel, edge membranous, margin hyaline, apex acute to obtuse. Perianth bristles 6, nearly as long as nutlet, one on outer series shorter than nutlet, retrorsely spinulose. Stigmas 3. Nutlet yellowish, broadly obovoid, ca. 1.5 × 1 mm, 3-sided, angles prominently costate, reticulate to deeply pitted-reticulate with isodiametric epidermal cells, apex broadly truncate and not constricted; persistent style base pyramidal-acuminate, base as wide as to slightly narrower than nutlet. Fl. and fr. Jul-Nov.
Rhizomes filiform; culms capillary, 2-20 cm. long; spikelets 3-4 mm. long, containing 1-4 achenes, green, sometimes spotted with purple, the scales acutish; bristles equaling the achene, which is obovoid, trigonous, white, coarsely cancellate, the tubercle pyramidal.
