Herb, dioecious, perennial, caespitose or with rhizome rarely shortly creeping and 2–3 mm diam., glabrous, forming large tussocks or small dense clumps. Cluster-roots present. Culms numerous, erect, 0.5–1.0 m long, 1.5–3.0 mm diam., terete or compressed or with a single furrow, smooth or slightly rugose, simple or with a few long, slender branches. Sheaths 12–30 mm long, basal sheaths much shorter, thick and rigid, green or occasionally brown; lamina often caducous, terete, 4–12 (–25) mm long; auricles membranous, weathering away, leaving a truncate apex. Inflorescence narrow, terminal, 6–15 cm long with 3–8 main branches each bearing up to 80 flowers; spathe on the main axis similar to upper sheaths but smaller, 1–2 cm long, erect and closely appressed, much shorter than inflorescence branches; secondary bracts and floral bracts broad-cordate to deltoid, subulate, 1.4–4.0 mm long, less rigid than the tepals; floral bracts 2, broad-obcordate to deltoid, aristate, 1.4–4.0 mm long, loosely enclosing the flower, less rigid than the tepals, margins membranous. Male flowers: tepals lanceolate, acute to aristate, rigid, scarious, reddish when young but becoming brown, 1.4–2.6 mm long; outer tepals slightly shorter; filaments 0.6–8 mm long; anthers partly exserted, 1–1.5 mm long. Female flowers: tepals equal in length. Capsule globular or obconical, 1.5–2 mm long. Seeds oblong-ellipsoid, c. 0.8 mm long, with a thin white surface layer, smooth, not noticeably colliculate, with a fine network of patent plates over the surface. Culm anatomy: epidermal cells with sinuous walls and globular silica bodies, transverse (horizontal) lines of stomates visible on culm surface, chlorenchyma of horizontal plates of palisade-like cells (2 layers of short cells), pillar cells absent, substomatal cavities lined by protective cells, central cavity angular, (2-or) 3-angled.
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