Dioecious, caespitose, perennial herb, with short erect rhizomes that have a long, dense, white, woolly pubescence of hairs 1–2 cm long; sand-binding roots present. Scales brown, scarious, glabrous, similar to sheaths but shorter. Culms erect, terete, straight to flexuose, 20–40 cm long, 0.8–1.3 mm diam., smooth or scabrous or finely striate, light-to yellow-green, glabrous or pubescent; internodes numerous. Sheaths oblong, caducous, 0.9–1.5 cm long, pale-to dark-brown, smooth or finely striate, glabrous; margins narrowly membranous, caducous; apex obtuse; lamina subulate, 1.0–1.8 mm long. Spikelets 1–3 per culm; spathes caducous. Male spikelets ovoid to obovoid, 0.6–1.2 cm long, 0.4–1.0 cm wide; with 3 or 4 sterile lower glumes and up to c. 40 fertile upper glumes; glumes brown to golden-brown, oblong, 3–5 mm long, apically obtuse, margin with white hairs; awn dark brown, 0.8–1.3 mm long. Female spikelets ovoid, c. 0.8 cm long, c. 0.4 cm wide; glumes 7–9, lowest few sterile and uppermost 2 or 3 glumes sterile; with 1 or 2 fertile glumes; glumes broad, brown, 2.8–5.0 mm long; apex obtuse and fringed with white hairs; awn dark brown, 1–3 mm long. Male flowers: tepals glabrous; outer tepals truncate, 2.5–3.5 mm long; inner tepals 2.4–4.0 mm long; filaments 5–6 mm long; anthers 1.8–2.4 mm long. Female flowers: tepals 5, rarely shortly apically ciliate; outer tepals rigid, acute, c. 5 mm long; inner tepals similar to males, 3–4 mm long. Nut globoid, dark brown, 2.5–2.9 mm long, including a short stipe and the style-base forming a short conical cap. Seed ovoid, tan-brown, 1.7 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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