Perennial with creeping, woody, 1-1½ mm thick rhizome. Stems solitary, approximate or somewhat remote, very slender, compressed-angular, smooth, 25-50 cm by ½-1 mm. Leaves at least half as long as the stem, erect, setaceous, often complicate, rigid, acute, antrorsely scabrid at the top, ⅓-½ mm wide; ligule absent; lower sheaths horny. Inflorescence compound or decompound, loose, with many to numerous spikelets, 3-6 cm long. Involucral bracts 1-2, erect, much shorter to slightly longer than the inflorescence, the lowest up to 4 cm. Primary rays 5-8, filiform, erect or obliquely erect, smooth. Spikelets solitary, oblong or oblong-linear, strongly compressed, acute, few-flowered, 4-5 by 1 mm; rachilla winged. Glumes distichous, thinly membranous, erect, ovate-lanceo-late, acute, muticous or apiculate, sharply keeled, with 3-nerved keel and nerveless, densely reddish gland-dotted sides, 2¾-4 by 1½-2 mm. Stamens 3; anthers linear, (1-)1½-2 mm. Style slender, glabrous except for the pyramidal, shortly hairy base, 3-3½ mm; stigmas 3, much shorter than the style. Nut trigonous with somewhat convex sides, obovoid or oblong-obovoid, shortly stipitate, umbonulate, ver-ruculose, stramineous to brownish, finely trans-versely lineolate by the oblong-linear epidermal cells, ¾-9/10 by 2/5-7/10 mm.
In swamps, savannah forests, on wet flats, at low altitudes, locally often abundant.
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