Plants perennial, cespitose, 10–40 cm, wiry; rhizomes absent. Culms erect to spreading-ascending, leafy based, trigonous or compressed, ribbed. Leaves exceeded by scape; blades narrowly linear to filiform, 0.2–2 mm wide, apex tapering, trigonous. Inflorescences terminal, solitary, headlike, dense, white, leafy involucrate, hemispheric to globose, 0.5–1.5 cm wide; involucral bracts (0–)1–4, ascending to recurved, green, (0.7–)2–5(–6) cm × 0.2–2 mm. Spikelets white, ovoid, 5–7 mm; fertile scales several, boat-shaped, 2.5–3.5 mm, keel curved, not sharp. Flowers: perianth absent. Fruits 0.8–1 mm; body yellow to near black, broadly pyriform-obovoid, tumidly lenticular, 0.5–0.8 × 0.5–0.8 mm, margin narrow, flowing into tubercle; surfaces transversely sharply wavy rugose, ridges bordered by rows of fine, linear, vertical lattices; tubercle depressed triangular, lunate-based, short beaked 0.2(–0.3) mm, gray-crustaceous.
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