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Herbs, perennial. Rhizomes creeping. Culms tufted or nearly scattered, obtusely 3-angled, clothed at base with bladeless leaf sheaths. Leaves basal and cauline; leaf blade of basal leaves slender, elongate, flat or 3-angled; cauline leaves usually reduced to a sheath. Involucral bracts spathelike or glumelike, rarely leaflike. Inflorescence a terminal simple or compound anthela or reduced to a single spikelet. Spikelets with few to many spirally arranged deciduous glumes. Glumes each subtending a bisexual flower. Perianth bristles 10-30, white or brownish red, elongating extremely after anthesis, smooth, silky. Stamens 3. Style base not distinct, not or slightly thickened; stigmas 3. Nutlet obovoid to oblong, 3-sided, smooth, apex beaked.
Scales spirally arranged, scarious, not awned; fls perfect, each in the axil of a scale; perianth of numerous (more than 10) persistent bristles, these much elongate at maturity, so that the mature spikelet forms a dense, cottony tuft commonly 2–4 cm; stamens 1–3; style trifid, deciduous; achene unequally trigonous, often with a short, slender stylar apiculus; perennial herbs of wet places, with grass-like lvs, the upper sheaths often bladeless; spikelets many-fld, solitary and terminal or few–many in an umbelliform cyme or head-like cluster; foliaceous bracts present in spp. with more than 1 spikelet. 20, N. Hemisphere.
