Herb, perennial, dioecious, caespitose, forming large dense tussocks; base with a woolly pubescence partly covered by glabrous cataphylls; cluster roots present. Cataphylls similar to sheaths but shorter, extending 1–2 cm up the culm, truncate with a short deltoid lamina. Culms erect, compressed, prominently striate, 40–70 cm long, 2.0–4.5 mm wide; fertile culms unbranched below the inflorescence, with 5 or 6 internodes below the inflorescence, the lowest internode short (1–2 cm), often covered by cataphylls; barren culms short, flexuose and branched. Sheaths 1–3 cm long, rigid, striate, green to straw-coloured, truncate; the ligule a narrow ridge densely pilose with short white hairs; the lamina erect and often broad and blunt, 3–11 mm long. Male spikelets 4–6.5 mm long, 3–4 mm wide, erect or pendulous on very slender branches, with 1–3 sterile lower glumes and 10–50 fertile upper glumes; glumes broad-oblanceolate, 2.5–3.5 mm long, brown, glabrous, soft and scarious, acute to acuminate; mucro small or absent. Female spikelets 4.5–5 mm long, 3–5 mm wide, with 1–3 sterile lower glumes and 3–8 (–19) fertile upper glumes; glumes similar to males. Male flowers: tepals acute, glabrous; outer tepals narrow, 2.2–2.6 mm long; inner tepals 1.5–2.3 mm long; anthers not exserted. Female flowers: 2 outer tepals keeled, with a few hairs along keel; inner tepals slightly shorter, flat, glabrous. Capsule slightly compressed, heart-shaped, 2–3 mm long, pale brown, smooth. Seeds with longitudinal lines of flat, rectangular cells which are mostly elongated transversely to the long axis of the seed. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma of 3 or 4 layers of short peg-cells, interrupted opposite some outer vascular bundles by sclerenchyma girders extending from parenchyma sheath to epidermis; central cavity present.
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