Plants perennial, cespitose, 100–150(–200) cm, coarse; rhizomes absent. Culms stiffly erect, leafy, triangular, multiribbed; principal leaves overtopped by culm; blades flat, 3–20 mm wide, apex attenuate, trigonous. Inflorescences terminal and axillary, diffuse clusters of corymbs, fascicles turbinate to hemispheric; bracts often overtopping clusters. Spikelets few to several per cluster, brown or reddish brown, lanceoloid, 10–15 mm, apex narrowly acute; fertile scales broadly lanceolate, (7.5–)10–13(–14) mm, apex acute, midrib short excurrent or not. Flowers: perianth bristles 5–6, longest reaching to or slightly beyond fruit midbody, antrorsely barbellate. Fruits 1(–2) per spikelet, 13–20(–25) mm; body oblong ellipsoid, compressed, 4–5(–6) × 2–3 mm, base narrowed, short, margins thickened, often crimped, surfaces concave, striate, minutely cancellate or pebbled; tubercle subulate, 2-grooved, 10–15(–20) mm, scabridulous. 2n = 18.
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Stout and leafy perennial to 2 m, with or without rhizomes; lvs commonly 8–20 mm wide; infl diffusely branched, to 2 dm wide, the glomerules short-spiciform, usually with 4–10 spreading or ascending spikelets 15–23 mm; bristles (3–)5(6), normally 2 equal ones on one side and a central one flanked by 2 shorter ones on the other side, all usually shorter than the achene, this flat, brown, obovate, 4–5.5 mm, the tubercle forming a beak 13–18 mm. Swamps and marshes; near to coast from Del. to Fla. and Tex., n. in the interior to s. Ind., s. Mo., and Okla.; W.I. Var. corniculata, of the e. seaboard, has the base of the beak half as wide as the top of the achene. Var. interior Fernald, of the Mississippi Valley, has the base of the beak nearly as wide as the top of the achene.
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