Glabrous annual with fibrous roots. Stems slender but rigid, densely tufted, compressed, 3-5-angled, smooth, (3-)10-30 cm by ½-1 mm, the base clothed with 1-2 tubular, bladeless or short-bladed, obliquely truncate, 2-3 cm long sheaths. Leaves shorter than to as long as the stems, often falcate, scabrid on the often involute margins, with pale, stramineous lower sheaths, 1-2 mm wide; ligule absent. Inflorescence compound or subdecompound, loose, with many spikelets, 5-8 cm long. Involucral bracts up to 6, filiform, more or less recurved, usually much shorter than the inflorescence, much dilated at the base, scabrid, 1-3 cm. Primary rays several, obliquely erect, compressed-angular, smooth, up to 5 cm. Spikelets solitary, ovoid or lanceolate, angular, acute, densely many-flowered, stramineous or brownish, 3-7 by 1-1¼(-1½) mm; rachilla narrowly winged. Glumes spiral, thinly membranous, triangular-ovate, acutish, sharply keeled, with prominent midnerve excurrent in a short, more or less excurved mucro, nerveless sides, and hyaline margins, 1¼-1½ by c. 1 mm. Stamens 1(-2); anthers oblong, ¼-⅓ mm. Style slender, flat, not hyaline-margined, glabrous, ¾-1 mm; stigmas 2, shorter than the style. Nut biconvex, with acute edges, obovate or broadly obovate, shortly stipitate, umbonulate, smooth, shining yellowish brown, obsoletely reticulate by the transversely elliptic, not impressed epidermal cells, ½-7/10 by 2/5-½ mm.
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