Herb, dioecious, rhizomatous, perennial, forming diffuse patches 0.3–3 m across. Rhizome horizontal, 3–6 mm diam., with pale woolly hairs covered by orange-brown scarious scales. Culms unbranched below the inflorescence, 30–60 cm long, terete, 0.5–1.5 mm diam., striate, pale-to grey-green or purplish brown; internodes 5–6 cm long. Sheaths 0.7–1.5 cm long, striate, green to pale-brown, darkening with age, apex mucronate with a narrow mucro 1–5 mm long; margin membranous, hyaline, c. 2 mm wide, weathering away. Male inflorescence narrow, interrupted, up to c. 10 cm long; spikelets on short branches or pedicellate at upper nodes. Female inflorescence of spikelets crowded on short lateral branches at the upper nodes. Male spikelets pedicellate; the pedicels filiform, tomentose, to c. 1 cm long; spikelets at first narrow-ovoid, becoming ovate in outline with spreading glumes, 4–9 mm long; glumes 6–14, usually all fertile, ovate, acute to acuminate, 2–3.5 mm long, membranous, red-brown, often becoming black, glabrous. Female spikelets crowded into small clusters, the clusters distant or crowded on short branches or ± sessile on the culm, 2–4 mm long, narrow-ellipsoid and brown when flowering but becoming globose and red-brown when fruiting; glumes broad-ovate, acuminate, 1–1.5 mm long, 0.7–1 mm wide, reddish brown or almost black, glabrous, margin membranous. Male flowers: tepals 5 or 6; outer tepals keeled, oblanceolate, acuminate, 1–1.5 mm long, brown-hyaline; inner tepals flat, lanceolate, acute to cuspidate, 0.5–1.3 mm long; stamens 3, filaments stout, 0.3–0.6 mm long, anthers 1–1.5 mm long. Female flowers: tepals 6, narrow-lanceolate to oblanceolate, acute to acuminate, 1–2 mm long, brown-hyaline, the margin shortly and densely fimbriate; style 3-branched, filiform; the branches free and stigmatic almost to the base, c. 2 mm long; the base persistent on the nut; floral bracts keeled, lanceolate, acuminate, 1–2 mm long, brown-hyaline, densely fimbriate on margin. Nut trigonous, c. 1.5 mm long, brown. Seed c. 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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