Plants perennial, densely cespitose, 15–60 cm; rhizomes compact, branching, slender. Culms lax, filiform, leafy, terete, grooved. Leaves ascending to erect, exceeded by culm; blades lax, filiform, margins proximally deeply involute, apex trigonous, tapering. Inflorescences mostly cymose clusters, simple or compound, 1–3(–4), widely spaced, loose, narrowly to broadly turbinate; branchies capillary, ascending to spreading; leafy bracts setaceous, exceeded by or exceeding cymes. Spikelets light red brown or brown, lance ovoid to fusiform, 3–4(–4.5) mm, apex acuminate; fertile scales ovate, mostly 2–3 mm, apex rounded to acute, midrib included or short excurrent. Flowers: perianth bristles mostly 6, unequal, rarely extending past fruit midbody, an-trorsely barbellate. Fruits 1–4 per spikelet, 1.8–2 mm; body yellow brown to brown, lustrous, tumidly obovoid lenticular, 1–1.5 × 1–1.5 mm; surfaces transversely wavy rugose, intervals vertically striate with narrow alveolae; tubercle flat, triangular, 0.3–0.6 mm.
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Cespitose, 2–5 dm, the stems and lvs filiform; cymes 1–3, small and loosely branched, each of the 3–6 spikelets on an elongate, capillary pedicel; spikelets ovoid,3–4 mm, castaneous, 2–4-fld, with 1–3 frs; bristles 6, antrorsely barbellate, unequal, the longest to 0.5 mm; achenes brown, plump, broadly obovoid or subrotund, 1.2–1.5 mm, transversely ridged; tubercle flat, deltoid, 0.3–0.5 mm. Bogs and wet soil on the coastal plain; N.J. to Fla., Tex., and trop. Amer.
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