Herbs, evergreen, dioecious, perennial; caespitose or with much-branched, glabrous extended rhizomes with closely appressed, overlapping, dark reddish brown, subglossy scales. Culms simple, terete, erect or sinuose, glabrous, smooth or scabrous, with several internodes. Leaves reduced to persistent, appressed sheaths; lamina reduced to a dorsiventrally compressed, + spreading, acuminate, rigid awn; apex often incurved; without a ligule at the transition to the sheath. Inflorescence: flowers solitary and terminal or in a terminal, erect spike; in spikelets but spikelet structure not obvious due to abortion of flowers; males with 3–10 sessile clusters, each of 2–8 flowers; females with 1–3 sessile clusters each of 1–4 flowers. Spathes similar to culm sheaths but more lax and occasionally more prominently ciliate. Male flowers: tepals 6; outer tepals keeled; inner tepals slightly shorter; stamens 3, extrorse; filaments connate into a stout, tapering column; anthers free, 2-locular, the 2 lobes each with 2 pollen sacs and each with a short apical awn c. 0.8 mm long; pistillode absent. Female flowers: tepals similar to males; outer tepals not keeled; inner tepals distinctly shorter; staminodes absent; ovary 3-locular, 3-angled; styles 3, the lower ⅓ connate forming a hollow tube, the free portion wholly stigmatic. Capsule woody, depressed globular, loculicidal. Seeds ovoid or globose, encircled in the median vertical plane by a narrow hyaline flange; the outer layer white, smooth, readily detached; the surface with fine short spines arising from the corners of minute concavities. Stem anatomy with a sclerenchyma cylinder bordered externally by a parenchyma sheath; epidermal cells and stomates oblique to the culm surface and chlorenchyma of alternating blocks of thin-walled and thick-walled cells.
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