Perennial. Rhizome short, without stolons. Stems rather stout, trigonous, smooth, striate, leafy, 60-90 cm, sometimes up to 1½ m. Leaves rigid, complicate at the base, otherwise flat, long-acuminate, scabe-rulous on the margins, glaucous, 6-10 mm wide; sheaths of the cauline leaves with a very short obtuse scarious appendage opposite the blade. Inflorescence consisting of 1-4 distant corymbiform anthelas, loose, 25-50 cm long. Bracts leafy, sheathing, shorter than the inflorescence. Terminal anthela much branched, often drooping. Branches very unequal, scaberulous, the central one very short, the lateral ones up to 20 cm; branchlets up to 5 cm. Spikelets in clusters of 2-6, ovate-lanceolate, acute, 2-flowered (lower flower bisexual, upper one ♂), 6-8 mm long. Glumes 6-7, subdistichous, mucronulate, ferrugineous, pur plish lineolate. Bristles in the bisexual flower 6, antrorsely scabrous, ferrugineous, slightly exceeding the nut, c. 5 mm, in the ♂ flower 0-2, 1-2 mm long. Stamens 3; anthers 3-4 mm. Style very shortly bilobed or almost undivided. Style-base conical-subulate, not grooved, greenish or stramineous, smooth or slightly scaberulous, about as long as the nut and half as wide, (2-)3-4 by ¾-1 mm at the base. Nut broadly obovate to suborbicular, attenuate at the base, biconvex, densely puncticulate, hispidulous at the top, shining brown to almost black, the apex suddenly narrowed into a short cylindrical neck hispidulous on the margins, 3½-5 by 2-3 mm (the ½-1 mm long neck included). Epidermal cells iso-diametric, those of the neck longitudinally stretched.
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