Rhizome short. Stems tufted, stout, ancipitous, smooth, 60-125 cm by up to 7 mm. Leaves crowded at the base (sometimes a single cauline leaf present), coriaceous, equitant, ensiform, gradually narrowed from the base and shortly acuminate, smooth, 10-20 mm wide. Panicle erect, oblong, rather narrow, interrupted, consisting of several distant fascicles of branches, 25-50 cm long. Bracts erect, shortly laminate, with long, brownish, ancipitous sheaths. Branches erect, rigid, unequal, smooth. Spikelets in numerous clusters, ovate, 2-4-flowered, deep reddish brown, 4-5 by c. 2 mm. Glumes c. 5, ovate, slightly emarginate, mucronulate from the sinus, 3-4 mm long; margins densely ciliate in the upper half. Bristles (3-)6, delicate, the longest c. 2 mm. Stamens 3; filaments slightly elongated after anthesis, not comose; anthers 1½ mm long, with very shortly produced connective. Nut ovate, triquetrous with somewhat convex sides, slightly rugulose, brownish, c. 3 by 0.9 mm (stipe and beak included); stipe obpyramidal, 3-winged, short; persistent style-base narrowly pyramidal, much narrower than the nut, hispid, c. 1 mm long.
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