Dioecious, caespitose perennial herb; cluster and sand-binding roots present. Cataphylls dark brown, scarious, glabrous, covering a very short pale pubescence. Culms many or few, erect to ascending, terete, straight to flexuose, 15–60 cm long, stout, 1–2 mm diam., smooth or scabrous or ribbed, green to yellow-green, mostly glabrous but often shortly pubescent towards the base; internodes several or numerous. Sheaths broad-oblong, smooth to ribbed, glabrous; lower sheaths shorter than the upper sheaths and often lacking a lamina, dark brown; upper sheaths caducous, pale-to dark-brown, 1.1–2.8 cm long; margin membranous; apex obtuse to truncate; lamina 1–4 mm long. Spathes similar to sheaths but shorter. Male spikelets 1–5 per culm, obovoid to globoid, 1.0–1.5 cm long, 0.5–1.5 cm wide; glumes c. 40–200; brown to golden-brown, oblong, apically obtuse and fringed with white, curly cilia, 3.2–6.0 mm long; awn erect, brown, 1.5–3.0 mm long, tip often hooked; several lower glumes sterile and persistent. Female spikelets 4–8 per culm (rarely more), ovoid, 8–12 mm long, 2.0–3.5 mm wide, with 4 or 5 flowers and 6–9 lower, sterile glumes; the glumes broad, brown, apically obtuse and fringed with straight, white to chestnut-tinged hairs 3.8–6.0 mm long; awn erect, brown, 1.5–2.6 mm long. Male flowers: tepals 2.5–5.5 mm long; outer tepals slightly larger than inner tepals and apically pubescent; filaments 4.0–6.3 mm long; anthers 2.0–2.5 mm long. Female flowers: tepals 5, pale, linear or narrow-spathulate, glabrous, 3.5–4.5 mm long; outer tepals keeled; inner tepals flat. Nut 2.0–2.5 mm long (including a short stout stipe), globoid. Seed globoid, brown, c. 1.1–1.3 mm long. Culm anatomy: central cavity present; chlorenchyma continuous, mostly of a single layer of elongated peg cells; mostly with inward-projecting epidermal cells partially lining substomatal cavities; walls of epidermal cells thickened on outer wall and outer part of radial walls; radial walls often sinuous; often with radially elongated epidermal cells forming mounds on the culm surface; with stalked, branched multicellular hairs.
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