Herb, dioecious, perennial, caespitose with shortly creeping or ascending rhizomes and white upwardly-growing roots. Culms much-branched, light green, straight and erect or flexuose, 0.5–1.0 mm diam. near the base, c. 0.2 mm diam. or less towards the apex, forming dense, tangled, trailing or erect dense masses to 2 m long, although usually shorter. Sheaths closely appressed, 3–10 (–15) mm long, green but becoming brown with age, glabrous or the apex with a short, loose tuft of white hairs; lamina linear, patent or reflexed, 2–5 mm long. Male spikelets numerous, sessile or on short pedicels at upper nodes, solitary or rarely in pairs, 3–4 mm long; glumes 5–10 glumes, fertile or 1 or 2 upper glumes sterile, elliptic, 2.0–2.5 mm long, concave, green-brown, glabrous, apex acute; lowest glume with a rigid, erect mucro c. 1.5 mm long; upper glumes with smaller and less rigid mucros. Female spikelets mostly singly on short (1–8 mm) pedicels at the upper nodes, 1.5–2.4 mm long; glumes mostly 3 or 4, membranous, lanceolate, acute, c. 1.5 mm long; mucro short, c. 0.5 mm long, dark. Male flowers: outer tepals slightly longer than inner, lanceolate-oblanceolate, acute, 1.5–2.5 mm long, pale-hyaline; filaments up to c. 2.5 mm long; anthers c. 1 mm long, exserted. Female flowers: tepals 6, broadly ovate, c. 1 mm long, pale and hyaline except for the midrib; style 3-branched, the branches very shortly united at base. Nut c. 2 mm long, pale, smooth. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma of 1 layer of elongated peg-cells, not interrupted, central cavity present.
Grows in peaty sand, peat or sand over ironstone pavements in forest, heath, swamps, sedgeland or dense shrubland, often on river banks, sites permanently or seasonally moist.
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