Plants perennial, densely cespitose or solitary, 10–100 cm; rhizomes absent. Culms mostly lax, ascending to leaning excurved, leafy, linear to filiform, terete. Leaves shorter than culm; blades ascending, filiform to narrowly linear, proximally flat, 0.5–1.5(–2.5) mm wide, margins distally strongly involute, apex trigonous, tapering. Inflorescences: spikelet clusters 1–3(–4), proximalmost distant, dense to sparse, narrowly turbinate to hemispheric; peduncles and branches ascending; leafy bracts linear setaceous, mostly overtopping clusters. Spikelets red brown, ovoid to lanceoloid, (3.5–)4–5 mm, apex acute; fertile scales ovate, 3–4.5 mm, apex acute, mucronate to awned cuspidate. Flowers: bristles 6, mostly reaching tip of tubercle or beyond, antrorsely barbellate. Fruits 1–3 per spikelet, (2.5–)3–3.5(–4.1) mm; body dark brown with small pale center, lenticular, broadly ellipsoid to suborbicular, 1.3–2.1 × 1.3–1.5 mm, smooth, margins narrow, flowing into tubercle; tubercle triangular-subulate, compressed, mostly 1.5–2 mm.
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Cespitose, to 1 m; lvs filiform or to 2 mm wide; terminal glomerule ovoid to subglobose, 6–12 mm wide; lateral glomerules 1–2, short-peduncled; spikelets 3–3.5 mm, castaneous, with 2–3 fls and 1–2 frs; bristles 6, 1.8–3.4 mm, antrorsely barbellate; achenes ellipsoid to rotund, dull brown, often with a pale central spot, 1.3–1.7 mm, two-thirds to fully as wide; tubercle flat-subulate above a triangular base, 1–2 mm, bogs and wet soil on the coastal plain; N.J. to Fla. and Tex.; rarely inland from w. Va. s. and w.; Mex. and C. Amer.
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