Herb up to 30 cm, glabrous. Stem simple or branched, 1-2.5 mm wide, tinged reddish. Leaves 2-3.5 mm long, slightly swollen at base, brown. Spike 1.5-6 cm by 4-5 mm, very dense, rounded at apex. Bracts (ovate-)lanceolate, 2-2.5 by 0.5-0.6 mm, at base slightly thickened along midrib, very gradually narrowed into the acute and finely mucro-nate apex, not fully covering the flower buds, patent with upturned apex at flowering time, persistent until the fruit has fallen, then reflexed and eventually caducous; bracteoles absent. Flowers c. 2 mm long, milk-white with yellow-brown calyx. Sepals halfway connate, unequal, slightly cucullate, 1.5 mm long. Anthers 5, sessile. Disk rather distinct, enclosing the basal part of the lower and lateral side of the ovary and adnate to it, expanding gradually in fruit and then visible as a rim near the base of it. Ovary broadly elliptic; style shorter than the ovary, subcylindri-cal, c. 0.1 mm long, unequally 2-lobed, the larger upper lobe stigmatic, the lower one tooth-like and hollow at apex; gynoecium somewhat shorter than the androecium. Fruit broadly elliptic, c. 1 by 1 mm, at base tightly enclosed by the disk, the whole enclosed by the somewhat shorter sepals.
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