Perennial. Stems usually robust (but slender plants occur), pubescent or glabrous, smooth or scabrid on the angles, up to 2 m tall and 7 mm thick. Leaves in the middle part of the stems and lower bracts clustered, in pseudo-whorls of 2-5, gradually narrowed upwards, scabrous on the margins and the main nerves in the upper part, usually more or less pubescent especially beneath, rarely glabrous, 3-14 mm wide; sheaths usually pubescent, not winged, often purplish; contraligule short, broadly rounded, hirsute-ciliate. Inflorescence oblong, up to 50 cm long, consisting of a terminal panicle and up to 10 lateral ones, ultimately purple; lateral panicles solitary at the nodes or up to 4 together; primary bracts shorter than to about as long as the inflorescence, secondary ones long, setaceous. Spikelets 2-3 together, unisexual; ♂ spikelets lanceolate, 3-3½ mm long; stamens 3; anthers linear, 1½-2 mm long; ♀ spikelets at the base of the branchlets, obovoid when in fruit, cuneate at the base, 3½-4 mm long; ♂ part reduced to a sterile glume. Cupula much smaller and thinner than in S. sumatrensis. Disk 3-lobed, triangular when flattened out, thick, yellow-brown; lobes triangular, obtuse, c. ⅓-½ as high as the nut, denticulate-crenulate at the top. Nut small, not exserted from the glumes, ovoid, rather narrower than in the related spp., hirtellous at the top, glabrescent, finally dingy purplish to blackish, 2-2½ mm long, c. 2 mm wide.
Sunny and moderately shaded localities, secondary forests, brushwood, swampy grasslands, along roads, at low and medium altitudes, up to 1000 m.
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