Herb, dioecious, perennial, rhizomatous, forming dense tussocks or diffuse patches to 1 m or more across. Rhizome horizontal, stout, 3–8 mm diam.; scales pale brown, scarious, partly covering a pale brown pubescence. Culms spaced up to 1 cm apart, erect to sinuose, terete to slightly compressed, smooth to striate, 20–60 cm long, 0.5–1.5 mm diam., glabrous, lowest internode pubescent. Sheaths scarious, 5–25 mm long, cuspidate with lamina 2–3 mm long, rarely longer. Inflorescence: male spikelets usually in a large, diffuse, terminal inflorescence 10–25 cm long, numerous, pedicellate; female spikelets solitary and terminating branches or few at the distal nodes of branches. Male spikelets ovoid to obloid, 3–7 mm long; glumes 10–20, all fertile, ovate, cuspidate to mucronate, glabrous, red-brown, 1.6–2.2 mm long; mucro erect, to c. 0.6 mm long. Female spikelets narrow at the base but upper glumes recurved and spreading, 8–18 mm long; glumes 3–8, lanceolate, abaxial surface of lowest glumes pubescent, cuspidate, 6–12 mm long tapering to a prominent reflexed tip, initially red-brown becoming grey with age. Male flowers: tepals 6, ovate; outer lateral tepals truncate, 1–1.7 mm long; inner tepals concave, obtuse to acute, 0.8–1.2 mm long; anthers c. 0.7 mm long. Female flowers: bract on flower stalk single, 0.2–0.5 mm long; tepals 0.5–1.0 mm long; style 3-branched. Fruit a nut with woody pericarp, globose, brown, 2.2–3.5 mm long, smooth to sparsely pitted, shed with a short thick stalk and perianth. Seed narrowly cylindrical, orange-tan, 1.6 mm long, 0.9 mm wide. 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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