Plants perennial, cespitose, 10–100 cm; rhizomes absent. Culms erect or excurved, leafy, obscurely trigonous, slender, firm. Leaves shorter than culms; blades spreading to ascending, linear, proximally flat, 2–4 mm wide, apex involute, then trigonous, subulate. Inflorescences: spikelet clusters 1–4, loose to dense, broadly turbinate, lobed or hemispheric; peduncles and branches ascending; leafy bracts exceeding proximal, sometimes distal, clusters. Spikelets light red brown, ellipsoid or narrowly ovoid, 4–5 mm, apex acute to acuminate; fertile scales broadly ovate, 3.5–4.5 mm, apex acute or acuminate, apiculate. Flowers: perianth bristles mostly 6, reaching from fruit midbody to tubercle tip or beyond, antrorsely barbellate. Fruits 1(–2) per spikelet, 2.5–3 mm; body dark brown, broadly, tumidly obovoid, 2–2.5 × 2–2.5 mm, apically buttressed to tubercle; surfaces finely transversely rugulose or nearly level, with fine transverse rows of pits or low papillae, often appearing nearly smooth; tubercle low conic, 0.4–0.6 mm, apiculate.
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Cespitose, 3–8 dm; lvs flat, 2–3 mm wide; infl of 1–3 terminal and subterminal, hemispheric to subglobose glomerules, with 1–3 remote, slenderly peduncled lateral glomerules; spikelets lanceolate to narrowly ovoid, 4–6 mm, with 2–3 fls and 1 fr; bristles 6, antrorsely barbellate, shorter to longer than the achene; achenes olivaceous to nearly black, broadly elliptic to rotund, much thickened distally, 2.1–2.6 mm, nearly or quite as wide, finely marked with numerous pits; tubercle conic, not flattened, 0.3–0.8 mm. Wet sandy soil on the coastal plain; se. Va. to Fla., Tex., and Cuba.
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