Herb, dioecious, perennial, rhizomatous. Rhizome horizontal, stout, 4–6 mm diam.; scales glossy orange-brown, partly covering a brown pubescence. Culms spaced mostly 1–2 cm apart, erect to slightly sinuose, compressed and concavo-convex in section, striate, branched, 30–40 cm long, 0.5–1.5 mm wide, mostly glabrous but the lower part with closely appressed flat multicellular hairs. Sheaths 5–12 mm long, tapering abruptly; with an auriculate, evanescent, distal membranous margin; lamina usually absent, if present then shortly erect, c. 1 mm long. Male spikelets 1–5 (–7) on each of several short slender branches at a few upper nodes of the culm, pedicellate, mostly erect, narrowly ovoid, 4.5–7.5 mm long; glumes 15–30, all fertile or with up to 6 sterile lower glumes, ovate, acute to minutely mucronate, concave, glabrous, brown, 1.8–2.3 mm long, with a broad apical hyaline margin. Female spikelets usually solitary and terminal on slender erect branches, narrowly cylindrical, c. 15 mm long, c. 2 mm diam.; glumes 6–8, lanceolate, cuspidate, brown becoming greyish with age, glabrous, 6–13 mm long. Male flowers: tepals 6; outer tepals oblanceolate, truncate; 1.2–1.5 mm long; inner tepals slightly longer, ± flat, lanceolate to oblanceolate, acute to truncate; anthers c. 0.8 mm long. Female flowers: tepals 6, dark brown, oblong, blunt, appressed to the nut, c. 2.3 mm long. Fruit a nut with woody pericarp, broadly cylindrical, tapering distally, rugose, pale brown, c. 4 mm long, 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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