Herb, evergreen, dioecious, perennial, forming large tussocks or patches of branching stems, to 3 m across. Rhizomes horizontal, to 30 cm long or more, 5–9 mm diam., nodes 3–8 mm apart, bearing crowded culms, covered with short glossy brown scales 5–8 mm long. Cataphylls several erect 1.5–6 cm long. Stems 35–100 cm tall, 0.5–2 mm diam.; internodes (3–) 6–11 cm long; young culms pink, turning blue-green; old culms grey-green, glaucous, rigid and wiry; branching except at the lowest nodes, with (1–) 2–4 lateral branches at each node. Sheaths lax, sometimes recurved, reddish brown, oblong, broadest near the middle, 2.5–3.5 cm long, truncate or auriculate; apical margin scarious; lamina 2–15 mm long. Inflorescence branches 2–4 at each upper culm node. Flowers shortly pedicellate, in clusters of 4–18 toward the apex of branches, subtended by broad deltoid, acute, hyaline bracts; outer bract c. 3 mm long, inner bract c. 1.5 mm long. Male flowers: tepals ovate, concave, reddish or yellowish brown, soft, hyaline, acute; outer tepals 1.3–1.9 mm long; inner tepals 2–2.6 mm long. Female flowers: tepals similar to males, ± equal, 2.5–3 mm long. Fruit a globose or elliptic small drupe with a thin fleshy outer pericarp and a hard inner pericarp, shed with a short fleshy pedicel and bracts and perianth attached, 2.2–2.7 mm long, 1.8–2.5 mm wide, red when young, aging to brown, on a stout pedicel. Seed surface patterned with small convex isodiametric angular cells.
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