Perennials. Rhizomes short, horizontal, covered with brownish scales. Culms densely tufted, 17-90 cm tall, 1-5 mm thick, obtusely 3-angled, smooth or striate, glabrous, with 2 or 3 bladeless sheaths at base. Leaves of vegetative shoot usually shortly bladed; sheaths cylindric, 2-19 cm, mouth obliquely truncate; ligule reduced to a circle of hairs or absent; blade linear, 7-25 cm × 1-2 mm. Involucral bracts 2 or 3, narrowly lanceolate to lanceolate, longest 5-11 mm, margin scabrid. Inflorescence a simple or compound anthela, 1.5-10 × 1.3-7 cm; primary rays 2-10, 0.7-5 cm, unequal. Spikelets 3-40 per inflorescence, solitary, ovoid, broadly ovoid, broadly ellipsoid, or globose-ellipsoid, 3-8 × 3-4 mm, terete, densely many flowered, apex obtuse. Glumes numerous, spirally imbricate, yellowish rust-colored, or brown, ovate to ovate-elliptic, 1.8-2.7 × 1-1.5 mm, membranous, 3-veined but abaxially scarcely keeled, apex obtuse to mucronate. Stamens 2 or 3; anthers ca. 0.5 mm. Style 3-sided or 3-cleft, glabrous, basally dilated; stigmas (2 or)3. Nutlet yellowish, shortly stipitate or sessile, obovoid to obovoid-globose, 0.8-1 × 0.5-0.7 mm, 3-sided to sometimes slightly compressed, obscurely cancellate with transversely oblong cells or rarely sparsely verruculose. Fl. and fr. Aug-Oct. 2n = 6.
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