Herb, dioecious, caespitose, perennial, forming small erect or rarely large tussocks. Cataphylls scarious. Culms unbranched below the inflorescence, c. 20–80 cm long, terete, 1–3 (–4) mm diam., smooth to substriate or minutely pitted, grey-green. Sheaths few (2–4), 1–2.5 cm long, striate, green to brown, apex acute to truncate; margin hyaline, 5–10 mm wide but weathering away. Male inflorescence with branches 5–15 cm long. Female inflorescence with 5–30 erect and often densely clustered spikelets. Male spikelets sessile or on drooping or erect filiform pedicels, narrow-ellipsoid, 4–8 mm long, 1–2 mm diam., becoming ovoid and up to 3 mm diam.; glumes 10–20, ovate-elliptic, acute to mucronate, 3.5–4.5 mm long, brown with a clearly defined hyaline margin and pigmented midvein. Female spikelets on erect, rigid pedicels, cylindrical, 10–15 mm long, 2–5 mm diam.; glumes c. 10, rigid, broad-ovate, 4.5–8 mm long, red when young, becoming brown, tapering into a recurved rigid awn. Male flowers: tepals membranous, pale brown or hyaline; outer tepals keeled, oblanceolate, mucronate to acuminate, 1.5–2.2 mm long; inner tepals equal in length to outer tepals, flat, ovate, obtuse. Female flowers dorsiventrally compressed; bracts between glume and flower absent; tepals 6, 2–4 mm long; outer lateral tepals broad-obovate, keeled, the upper half thick, fleshy and convex with a broad laciniate wing; inner tepals linear-lanceolate, acute, slightly longer than outer. Fruit a slender elliptical nut with a hyaline pericarp and two longitudinal pale lines, c. 1.5 mm long, shed with attached tepals. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma interrupted by groups of pillar cells that extend from the parenchyma sheath to the epidermis.
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