Plants perennial, densely cespitose, 10–30 cm; rhizomes absent. Culms lax, erect to excurved, leafy toward base, filiform. Leaves overtopped by scape; blades filiform, distally flattened, channeled, tapering, to 1 mm wide, margins strongly involute, apex blunt. Inflorescences: spikelet clusters 1–3, laterals widely spaced, all narrowly turbinate, ellipsoid, or ovoid; leafy bracts setaceous, overtopping proximal clusters, often overtopped by terminal ones. Spikelets erect or ascending, red brown, lanciform, mostly 4.5–5 mm, apex acute; fertile scales lanceolate, (3–)4–4.5 mm, apex acute, apiculate. Flowers: perianth absent. Fruits 2–3(–5) per spikelet; stipe and receptacle 0.1–0.2(–0.3) mm, setose; body brown with pale glassy center, narrowly obovoid ellipsoid, lenticular, 1.2–1.5 mm, margins narrow, flowing to tubercle; surfaces very finely lined longitudinally, transversely with wavy lines of tiny pits; tubercle narrowly triangular or slightly concave sided, flattened, 0.7–1.2(–1.5) mm.
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