Probably perennial. Stems slender, smooth, retrorsely hirsute especially on the middle of the sides, to glabrous, 10-40 cm by ½-1 mm. Leaves aggregated towards the base of the stems, usually much overtopping the stem, with obtuse tip, smooth, pubescent with long, white or greyish, patent hairs, sometimes glabrescent, 3-5 mm wide; sheaths narrow, pubescent, not winged; mouth of sheaths truncate or emarginate, not appendaged. Inflorescence consisting of a very dense, globose or semiglobose, terminal cluster of spikelets 1-2 cm across, and 1-2 smaller clusters (sometimes reduced to a single spikelet) lower down on the stem, on capillary, more or less exserted peduncles in the axil of a leaf-like bract. Spikelets strictly unisexual, large, 8-9 mm long, ferrugineous or rufescent; ♂ spikelets lanceolate, narrow, acute; stamens 3; anthers linear, 3 mm long; ♀ spikelets ovate-lanceolate; glumes 5-6, lanceolate, acute, muticous, pubescent with long patent hairs especially near the margins and on the keel; style 3 mm. Cupula thick, large, 1½-2 mm. Disk almost as wide as the nut, not or hardly lobed, pale. Nut globose, distinctly apiculate by the remainder of the style, with 6 pits at the base, densely tuberculate, stellately hairy on the top of the tubercles, dull, white or greyish brown, 1½-1⅔ mm across.
On Kedah Peak in grassy spots surrounded by forest, on G. Tahan abundant on slightly damp, exposed rocks and screes, in Padang Kandis in sandy Melaleuca forest, in Celebes in moist monsoon forest; at low altitudes, up to 900 m.
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