Herb, dioecious, caespitose, perennial, forming small tussocks, with brown scarious cataphylls extending shortly up the culms and partly covering a brown woolly pubescence. Culms unbranched, 15–40 cm long, slender, c. 0.5 (–1) mm diam., pale grey-green, densely covered by pale, closely appressed trichomes. Sheaths few (1 or 2 (–4)), to 1 cm long, purple to grey-green; apex acute to subulate; margin hyaline, to 4 mm wide. Male spikelets erect to drooping on filiform pedicels, narrow-ovoid to cylindrical, 4–6 mm long, with c. 10 glumes; glumes ovate, acute, 2.0–3.0 mm long, brown, hyaline, glabrous. Female spikelets mostly erect, cylindrical, 7–12 mm long, with 1or 2 sterile lower glumes and c. 10 fertile upper glumes; glumes ovate, acute to cuspidate, 3–7 mm long, concave to weakly-keeled, the midvein brown, the remainder hyaline and membranous, pale brown becoming grey; the pedicel base with a dense tuft of erect hairs c. 1 mm long; floral bracts 2, unequal, one or both with a long, filiform awn to c. 8 mm long, the larger bract narrow-lanceolate, the smaller bract oblanceolate, the apical half markedly thickened, usually with a shorter awn. Male flowers: tepals 4–6, thin, membranous; 2 outer tepals keeled, 1.0–1.4 mm long, brown-hyaline; inner tepals flat, slightly shorter, hyaline; stamens 3, filaments very short, anthers 0.6–0.8 mm long. Female flowers: tepals 6; 2 outer laterals spathulate, c. 1.5 mm long, brown-hyaline, with a prominent, rigid wing, the apex broad and tapering abruptly to a narrow, erect awn c. 0.5 mm long; inner tepals very narrow-lanceolate, weakly-keeled, ciliate, 1.2–1.5 mm long. Fruit a narrow-ovoid nut, 1–1.5 mm long, yellow-brown, shed with tepals, bracts and style attached; pericarp hyaline; seed ovoid-fusiform, 0.8–1 mm long. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma interrupted by groups of pillar cells that extend from the parenchyma sheath to the epidermis.
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