Plants perennial, cespitose, 30–90 cm; rhizomes absent. Culms erect or ascending, terete to obscurely trigonous, multiribbed, densely leafy based, slender, stiff, papillose to scabrid puberulent. Leaves forming strong rosette, distal widely spaced, much exceeded by scape; basal leaf blades short linear, flat, 4–6 mm wide, culm leaf blades narrower, longer, all ciliate, apex bluntly acute. Inflorescences terminal; spikelet cluster 1, crowded, hemispheric, often lobed, to 2 cm wide; bracts strongly ciliate distally; longer leafy bracts exceeding cluster. Spikelets dark red brown, ovoid, 4–5(–6) mm, apex acute; fertile scales broadly ovate, 4–4.5 mm, apex blunt, sometimes apiculate or with mucro to 1 mm, midrib scabrid. Flowers: bristles 6, some vestigial, none reaching past fruit midbody, antrorsely barbellate. Fruits 1–2 per spikelet, (1.9–)2–2.5 mm; body dark brown with paler center, lenticular, broadly ellipsoid to orbicular, 1.6–2 × 1.5–1.6 mm, margins flowing to tubercle; tubercle low triangular, 0.5 mm, often apiculate.
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