Glabrous perennial with woody, shortly creeping rhizome covered with the fibrous remains of old leaf-sheaths. Stems solitary or somewhat tufted, rigid, angular, slightly compressed, sulcate, smooth, or scabrid at the top, leafy at the base, 10-55 cm by c. 1 mm. Leaves shorter than the stems, rigid, flat, often with inrolled scabrid margins, often recurved, ab-ruptly pointed, 1½-3 mm wide; ligule absent; lower sheaths ferrugineous. Inflorescence compound or subdecompound, loose, 3-15 cm long. Involucral bracts 2-4, very short, erect, rigid, the lowest up to 2½ cm. Primary rays erecto-patent, smooth, up to 8 cm long. Spikelets in clusters of 2-5, or a few solitary, ovoid, angular, acute, several-flowered, brown to castaneous, 3-4 by c. 1½ mm; rachilla broadly winged. Glumes spiral, subchartaceous with broad scarious margins, triangular-ovate, acute or minutely apiculate, keeled, with 3-nerved keel and nerveless sides, 2-2¾ by 2-2½ mm. Stamens 3; anthers linear, ¾-1 mm long; connective distinctly produced, bristly at the top. Style triquetrous, pyramidally thickened at the base, glabrous, or ciliolate at the top, 1-2 mm long; stigmas 3, about as long as the style. Nut trigonous with somewhat convex sides, obovoid, minutely stipitate, umbonulate, verruculose or almost smooth, whitish or stramineous, 4/5-1 by 7/10-4/5 mm; epidermal cells transversely oblong.
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