Plants perennial, cespitose or solitary, to 100 cm; rhizomes scaly, 3–4 mm thick. Culms arching or erect, leafy-based, distally wandlike, terete, multiribbed. Leaves ascending to spreading, overtopped by scape; blades linear, proximally flat, 2.5–5 mm wide, apex subulate, trigonous. Inflorescences terminal, headlike clusters of spikelets, clusters dense, leafy-involucrate; involucral bracts several, spreading to downcurved, longest 6–13 cm × 5–10 mm, mostly white to midbract, then green, abruptly narrowly linear. Spikelets white, ovoid, 5–7 mm; fertile scales boat shaped, sharply curved-keeled, 5 mm, apex acute. Flowers: perianth absent. Fruits several per spikelet, 1.5–2 mm; body yellowish to deep brown, tumidly lenticular, broadly obovoid to orbicular or oblate, 1.5 mm, widest at or toward midbody, margins flowing to tubercle; surfaces with many fine rows of vertical shallow lattices, their contiguous ends making transverse rows of papillae; tubercle crescent-based, depressed-triangular, 0.5 mm, apex acute. 2n = 12.
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