Herb, dioecious, caespitose, perennial, forming slender and few-stemmed tufts to large dense tussocks to 40 cm across; base with pale brown cataphylls and a pale brown woolly pubescence. Culms 50–85 cm long, terete, 2–3 (–5) mm diam. near base, striate, grey-green, toward the base often tinged pink or grey; internodes 3–9 cm long. Sheaths 10–15 mm long, striate, closely appressed, tan to grey-brown; lamina narrow, blunt, 3.5–7 mm long, persistent; margin membranous, 1.5–3 mm wide, weathering away. Inflorescence sparsely branched; male spikelets semi-erect to drooping on long slender branchlets; female inflorescence slender, spikelets crowded on short (to 5 cm long) final branches; spathes ovate, 0.9–1.2 mm long, margin tomentose, though may appear glabrous due to weathering. Male spikelets ovoid, 3.5–5.5 mm long; glumes 11–27, all fertile, ovate, acuminate to aristate, 1.4–2 mm long (with a short awn to 0.6 mm long), glossy red-orange-brown, the apical one-third hyaline. Female spikelets 2–5 mm long; glumes lanceolate to ovate, acuminate, 1–1.5 mm long, shorter than tepals, glabrous. Male flowers sessile to shortly pedicellate: tepals 5 or 6, hyaline, acute, 0.9–1.6 mm long; outer tepals keeled, linear to lanceolate, pigmented only along keel, cuspidate; inner tepals flatter and broader, lanceolate to broad-ovate, inner tepals usually slightly longer; stamens 3, filaments c. 0.3 mm long, anthers c. 0.8 mm long. Female flowers: base with long pale hairs; floral bracts ovate, ½ as long as tepals, margin hyaline; tepals 6, outer tepals broad-lanceolate to spathulate, blunt or tapering abruptly, 1.2–1.5 mm long, hyaline, toward the apex pigmented only along keel, surface glabrous or papillate, margin densely white-tomentose; style 3-branched, branches wholly stigmatic, base persistent on the nut. Nut narrow-ovoid, 1–1.3 mm long, yellow-brown. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma interrupted by groups of pillar cells that extend from the parenchyma sheath to the epidermis.
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