Annual, with fibrous roots. Stems tufted, slender, trigonous, striate, smooth, leafy at the base, 15-30(-45) cm tall. Leaves shorter than the stems, somewhat rigid, flat or complicate, gradually attenuate, scaberulous at the top, 1-2(-3) mm wide. Inflorescence a single globose or semiglobose dense head (2-)2½-3½ cm across. Bracts 5-6, very unequal, patent or reflexed, sheathless, densely ciliate at the dilated base, not keeled, the lowest up to 10 cm. Spikelets numerous, linear-lanceolate, acumi-nate, 2(-3?)-flowered, 11-14 mm long; lower flower female, perfecting a nut, upper one ♂. Glumes 6-7, distichous, acute, keeled, fulvous-ferrugineous. Bristles in the lower flower 6, 3 outer ones densely plumose at the base on the outer side, otherwise antrorsely scabrous, 3 inner ones antrorsely scabrous (not or hardly plumose), 5 of them 8-12 mm long, 1 shorter (4-8 mm); in the upper flower bristles absent. Stamens 2; anthers 2½-3 mm long, the base destitute of pollen. Style very long, shortly bilobed. Style-base oblong-conical, grooved on both sides, pale, antrorsely scabrous, ⅔ to about as long as the nut and about as broad as its apex, not decurrent on its shoulders. Nut oblong, strongly dorsiventrally compressed, hispidulous or tuberculate especially towards the apex, minutely puncticulate, the sides slightly concave, the margins bordered by a pale line, brown, 3½-4 by c. 1¼ mm; epidermal cells isodiametric.
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