Perennials. Rhizomes short, thick, woody, oblique, not creeping. Culms 16-70 cm tall, slender, triquetrous, glabrous or pilose. Leaves basal and cauline. Basal leaves only with closed sheath, without leaf blade; sheath pale brown, 3-angled, edges villous, surfaces pubescent, not winged, apex with 3 triangular teeth. Cauline leaves with a sheath like that of basal leaves; contraligule absent; leaf blade linear, 1.5-3 mm wide but apically narrowing, both surfaces villous, margins scabrous, apex obtuse. Involucral bracts leaflike, basalmost to 5 cm, sheathing; bractlets setaceous, both surfaces densely pilose. Inflorescences subcapitate, laxly globose, 1-3 cm, with 5-20 spikelets. Spikelets narrowly ovoid, 4-8 mm, villous especially distally, unisexual, with 14-16 glumes. Glumes yellowish brown, awned, basal 1 or 2 empty, 1 above empty ones with a female flower, others with male flowers. Male flowers: stamens 3. Female flower: style slender; stigmas 3, longer than style, slightly puberulent. Disk brown, stalklike, not lobed. Nutlet white or light brown, subspherical, 1.5-2 mm, obscurely if at all 3-sided, tuberculate, shiny, with tufts of stellate hairs, apex rounded and with a fine tip. Fl. and fr. Apr-Jul.
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Very similar in habit and closely related to S. carphiformis RIDL. Usually smaller (rarely up to 30 cm tall), with narrower leaves 2-3 mm wide, and copiously pubescent all over with long, white or greyish patent hairs. Leaves from much shorter than to about as long as the stems. Inflorescence consisting of a terminal cluster 1-1½ cm wide; no axillary clusters in the axil of the foliaceous bract, which therefore has become an ordinary leaf near the top of the stem. Spikelets usually slightly smaller, 6-8 mm long; glumes of ♀ spikelets 4, distinctly mucronulate, hairy all over; anthers 1½ mm long; appendage of the connective smooth or nearly so. Style c. 2 mm long. Cupula small, c. 1 mm wide. Disk very small, much narrower than the nut, columnar, triquetrous, with a strong rib on each side, forming a stipe under the nut. Nut not or hardly apiculate (the remainder of the style not longer than the tubercles on the nut).
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