Perennial with short rhizome. Stems densely tufted, strongly compressed (almost ancipitous), glabrous, or pilose especially towards the apex, smooth, (10-)20-4 by ¾-1¼ mm, the base clothed with 1-2 tubular, bladeless, 5-8 cm long sheaths. Basal leaves shorter than the stems, erect, flat, rather rigid, obtuse or abruptly acuminate, glabrous, scabrid on the margins in the upper part, 1½-2 mm wide; ligule absent; lower sheaths bladeless, with membranous margins, ferrugineous or brown. Inflorescence simple or subcompound, rather dense, with 2-9 spikelets, 1½-5 cm long, 2-7 cm wide. Involucral bracts 2-3, very short, glume-like, cuspidate, 1-5 mm. Primary rays 1-5, finally patent to arcuately reflexed, compressed, smooth, ½-2 cm; secondary rays when present very short, c. ½ cm. Spikelets solitary, linear, terete, subacute, loosely many-flowered, 10-25 by 2 mm; rachilla winged. Glumes spiral, thinly membranous, oblong-ovate, very obtuse and notched, mucronulate just below the apex, scarcely keeled, densely reddish gland-dotted in the apical half, 3-5-nerved (midnerve prominent, lateral nerves obscure), fulvous or fuscous, 4-4½ by 2½-2¾ mm, the margins long-ciliate in the upper ½-¾. Stamens 3; anthers linear, 2-2½ mm; connective distinctly produced, the appendage oblong-ovate, crested by conspicuous bristles. Style triquetrous, pyramidally thickened at the base, glabrous except for the hispidulous base, 3-3¾ mm; stigmas 3, shorter than the style. Nut very obtusely trigonous, broadly obovoid, shortly stipitate, hardly or not umbonulate, densely verruculose, at first whitish, ultimately blackish, 9/10 by 7/10-4/5mm; epidermal cells obscure, longitudinally elliptic or oblong.
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