Dioecious, rhizomatous perennial herb, with cluster-and sand-binding roots. Rhizome elongated, 2.5–5.0 mm diam., with light-to dark-brown scarious, partially pubescent scales partly covering a pale woolly pubescence. Cataphylls dark brown. Culms erect to flexuose, terete, simple, smooth or irregularly ribbed, 20–50 cm long, 0.8–1.5 mm diam., upper culms usually glabrous but basally often very shortly tomentose; internodes numerous. Sheaths scarious, oblong, obtuse or truncate, 0.8–1.8 cm long; caducous, dark-to pale-brown; lamina terete, short, c. 0.8 mm long; margin narrowly membranous, hyaline. Inflorescence: spikelets solitary and terminal on the culm; female spikelets also occurring in the uppermost axil; spathe caducous, lamina often absent. Male spikelets globoid, 0.5–1 cm long, 0.5–0.8 cm wide; glumes c. 10–40, c. 5 lower glumes sterile; glumes broadly oblong, acute to truncate, 2.5–3.7 mm long, scarious, light brown to brown; margins and apex narrowly membranous and shortly ciliate; awn c. 0.5 mm long. Female spikelets ovoid, 6–10 mm long, 3–4 mm wide; glumes 5–9, the lowest few and uppermost 1 or 2 sterile, and 2 or 3 glumes fertile, ovate, obtuse to truncate, 2.5–5.5 mm long, light-to dark-brown, margin apically pubescent; awn, black, reflexed or recurved, 1.5–4 mm long. Male flowers: tepals 2.3–3.0 mm long, glabrous; outer tepals spathulate; inner tepals oblanceolate to lanceolate and apically toothed; filaments 3.0–4.3 mm long; anthers 1.2–1.6 mm long. Female flowers tepals 3–5, 2.0–3.5 mm long, pale, thin; the inner tepals reduced or absent. Nut ovoid to globular, 3–4 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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