Plants perennial, cespitose, sometimes matted. Taproots thickened, woody; crown many-branched, thickened. Stems erect to ascending, green, 8-40 cm, glabrous, internodes of flowering stems 0.5-10+ times as long as leaves. Leaves tightly overlapping in proximal 3 of stem, variable spaced, usually connate proximally, with loose, scarious sheath 0.2-1 mm; blade erect to spreading, green, flat or convex to 3-angled, 1-3-veined, prominently so abaxially, filiform, linear to linear-lanceolate, 8-30 × 0.5-1.8 mm, rigid, margins not thickened, ± scarious, smooth, apex green, blunt to pungent, flat to navicular, shiny, glabrous; axillary leaves present among vegetative leaves. Inflorescences 5-30-flowered, lax to congested cymes; bracts narrowly lanceolate to subulate, herbaceous, margins scarious. Pedicels 0.3-6 cm, glabrous. Flowers: hypanthium dish-shaped; sepals 3-veined, ovate to lanceolate (herbaceous portion ovate to narrowly lanceolate), 3-6 mm, not enlarging in fruit, apex green, acute to mostly acuminate, not hooded, glabrous; petals oblong-obovate, 1.3-2 times as long as sepals, apex rounded, entire. Capsules on stipe ca. 0.1-0.2 mm, ellipsoid, 3-4 mm, usually shorter than sepals. Seeds black, suborbiculate, compressed, 0.8-0.9 mm, tuberculate; tubercles elongate. 2n = 30(?), 44.
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