Dioecious, caespitose perennial herb with short, erect pubescent rhizomes; scales glabrous, dark brown; sand-binding roots present. Culms erect or spreading, quadrangular, the angles prominent and often scabrous, the sides concave or ribbed when dry, straight or flexuose, 9–30 cm long, 0.7–1.5 mm diam., glabrous or sparsely pubescent, yellowish green, brittle when fresh; internodes few. Sheaths: basal sheaths oblong to broad-ovate, dark red-brown, glossy 0.7–2.8 cm long, often shortly pubescent, apex acute with a short lamina, c. 2.5 mm long; upper sheaths 1–3, usually persistent, broadly spathulate, lax and open, 0.6–1.9 cm long, greenish to light-to dark-brown; apex obtuse to truncate to emarginate; margin narrowly membranous with white hairs; lamina 2–7 mm long. Inflorescence: spikelets: males mostly solitary and terminal on the culm; female 1–2 on the culm; spathes rigid, ovate or broad ovate, ciliate, 2–3 mm long, with a stout blunt awn 2–2.5 mm long. Male spikelets ovoid, 7–14 mm long, 3.5–8.0 mm wide; lower 5–8 glumes with short awns and subtending abortive flowers; upper glumes 20–60 (–c. 100), ovate, aristate, 3–4.5 mm long, ribbed, pale-to dark-brown, glossy; margin with white hairs; awn 1.5–2.5 mm long;. Female spikelets narrow-cylindrical when young, becoming ellipsoidal and broader with age, 7–8 mm long, initially 1.5–2.0 mm wide but becoming more than twice as broad; the lower 4–6 glumes sterile and the upper 7 or 8 fertile, similar to males, abaxial surface partially pubescent; awn erect, to 1.5 mm long. Male flowers: tepals 5, ± equal in length, 2.5–4.0 mm long, oblong to oblanceolate, obtuse to acute and very shortly ciliate; filaments 3.8–4.2 mm long; anthers 0.9–1.4 mm long. Female flowers: tepals 1 or 2, folded, truncate, 1.5 mm long; gynoecium with a single loculus and style. Nut ovoid, 2.0–2.5 mm long. Seed ovoid, brown, c. 1.1–1.7 mm long. Culm anatomy: central cavity present or absent; 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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