Plants perennial, cespitose, 20–45 cm; rhizomes absent. Culms erect to arching or spreading, leafy, ± filiform, ± terete, stiff to rather lax. Leaves exceeded by culm; blades linear filiform, proximally shallowly concave, 1 mm, apex tapering, trigonous, blunt or broadly acute. Inflorescences: spikelet clusters 1–2, mostly compact, turbinate to hemispheric; leafy bracts setaceous, exceeding spikelet clusters. Spikelets dark red brown, ovoid, 2–3 mm, apex acute; fertile scales obovate, 1.5–1.7(–2) mm, apex broadly rounded or retuse, midrib excurrent as cusp or mucro to 0.5 mm. Flowers: bristles 6 or vestigial, rarely reaching fruit midbody, antrorsely barbellate. Fruits 1–2 per spikelet,1.7–2 mm; body brown with large pale center, lenticular, broadly obovoid to ± orbicular, 1.2–1.5 × 1.4–1.6 mm; tubercle flat, triangular, concave-sided, 0.4–0.6 mm, sometimes apiculate.
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Much like no. 19 [Rhynchospora fascicularis (Michx.) Vahl], but the stems slender and lax, no more than 1 mm thick; longer lvs equaling the stems; bristles never more than half as long as the achene. Coastal plain from se. Va. to n. Fla. and Ala.