Perennial from a short rhizome, often robust.. Leaves many, rush-like, narrow, semi-cylindrical, up to 40 cm. long, 1–3 mm. wide, usually crowded in an erect tuft, subulate when short, spongy, the tip obtuse with a pore on the upper surface, woolly in the axils.. Scapes 1–6(–15), 25–65 cm. high, 6–8-ribbed; sheaths equalling or longer than the leaves, the mouth shortly slit, limb rounded or becoming split.. Capitulum hemispherical becoming globose with intruded base at maturity, white, 8–12 mm. diameter, the pointed tips of the floral bracts usually visible among the exserted white-hairy petals; involucral bracts shorter than the capitulum width, in several series, spreading, firm, 2.3–3.5 mm. long, straw-coloured or light brown and often flushed grey or black with a central paler stripe, oblong to ovate, outer rounded, the inner acute; floral bracts up to 3.7×1.2–1.5 mm., cuneate, white-villous on the widest part, firm and straw-coloured below, the tip chartaceous, dark grey, brown or infrequently pale, often abruptly long-cuspidate but sometimes merely acute or apiculate; receptacle pilose; flowers trimerous, 3.0–4.5 mm. long.. Male flowers: sepals free, ± equal, laterals narrowly oblong-navicular, 1.7–2.5 mm. long, white or with greyish or brownish tips, white-villous towards the obliquely truncate tip, median similar but flat; petals unequal, glandular, white-villous overthe whole inner blade, two small, the third narrowly oblong, up to 3 mm. long, exserted from the capitulum; anthers black.. Female flowers: sepals as in the male flowers, 1.5–2.8 mm. long; petals and ovary both stipitate; petals unequal, glandular, white-villous over the inner blade, narrowly oblanceolate-oblong, somewhat narrowed to the base but not clawed, two 1.5–2.5×0.5–0.6 mm., the third ± 1/3 longer, exserted from the capitulum.. Seeds subrotund, 0.5–0.6 mm. long, reddish brown with white papillae.
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