Glabrous annual with fibrous roots. Stems very slender, setaceous, tufted, quadrangular, smooth or minutely scabrid at the top, leafy at the base, 10-25 cm by ½-¾ mm. Leaves radical and 1-2 somewhat higher on the stem, much shorter than the stems, subfalcate, flat or with inrolled margins, acute, scabrid on the margins in the upper part, 1-1½ mm wide; ligule absent. Inflorescence capitate, hemi-spherical or subglobose, with 5-12 spikelets, 5-10 mm across. Involucral bracts 4-6, spreading or reflexed, dilated at the base, the lower 1-2 somewhat longer than the inflorescence, 1-1½ cm long. Spike-lets sessile, stellately spreading, oblong-ovoid, angu-lar, acute, few-to several-flowered, 3-8 by 1½-2 mm; rachilla winged. Glumes spiral, membranous, erect, ovate, keeled, with strong midrib and nerveless, stramineous to ferrugineous sides, glabrous or denticulate-ciliolate at the upper edge, mucronulate to strongly mucronate from the incised apex, 1½-3 mm long; mucros almost straight to strongly recurved, ⅓-1¾ mm long. Stamens 2-3; anthers oblong or linear, ½-1½ mm. Style triquetrous, pyramidally thickened at the base, glabrous, (¾-)1-2 mm long; stigmas 3 (or in a few flowers 2), about as long as the style. Nut obtusely trigonous, obovoid or obovoid-pyriform, shortly stipitate, obtuse, minutely umbonulate, smooth and subcancellate by the slightly impressed epidermal cells in c. 9 vertical rows on each face, or densely verruculose, whitish or shining dark brown, 3/5-¾(-1) by ½-⅔ mm.
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