Herb, dioecious, caespitose perennial, forming many-stemmed tussocks; scales brown, partly covering a woolly pubescence. Culms spreading from a narrow base, crowded, erect or ascending, usually somewhat compressed but often terete towards the base, substriate to ribbed, much-branched, 30–40 cm long, 0.5–1 mm diam.; hairs so closely appressed as to appear glabrous. Sheaths red or purple-brown when young, appearing glabrous, 0.5–2 cm long, + acute; lamina erect, caducous 2–12 mm long. Inflorescence: male spikelets usually numerous, erect or on pendulous branches, at the uppermost few nodes, pedicellate; females with few to c. 20 spikelets per culm. Male spikelets ovoid, 2.5–4 mm long; glumes 10–15, all fertile, ovate to obovate, acute to minutely mucronate, glabrous, brown, 1.5–2 mm long. Female spikelets initially very narrow-cylindrical, the glumes becoming strongly recurved, 6–10 mm long; glumes 5–8, + lanceolate, acute, 3–8 mm long, brown with a broad hyaline apical margin, glabrous. Male flowers: tepals 6; 2 outer tepals slightly longer, broad-oblanceolate, truncate, 0.8–1.0 mm long; inner tepals flat, lanceolate to oblanceolate, acute to truncate; anthers c. 0.8 mm long, sometimes becoming exserted. Female flowers: flower stalk with a single bract, c. 0.3 mm long; tepals 1–1.5 mm long; style 3anched in the upper third. Fruit a nut with woody pericarp, narrow-cylindrical, orange-tan, 1.9–3.0 mm long, c. 1 mm wide, shed with a short stalk and perianth. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma of 2–4 layers of short cells, interrupted by pillar cells and partial sclerenchyma ridges opposite the outer vascular bundles.
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