Slender to very robust tussocky perennial with a short woody rhizome and numerous c. 0.5 mm thick wiry roots that are often covered by a thick greyish tomentum and then c. 2 mm thick; stems 1–40 (rarely to 120) cm long and c. 1–4 mm thick, triangular to almost terete, glabrous. Leaves many, from the basal 3–15 cm only; sheaths rather thin, grey to reddish brown, the lower sometimes splitting up into reddish brown fibres; blades 5–25 cm long and 1–3 mm wide, often rather thick, weakly or strongly curved, sometimes folded as dry. Inflorescence a terminal head of 3–50 crowded spikelets usually 3–5 cm in diam., but often subtended by 1–8 new heads or groups of spikelets on 1–6 cm long peduncles; involucral bracts 1–5, leafy, erect or spreading, the largest 1–25 cm long, usually overtopping the inflorescence. Spikelets 5–30 x 2–4 mm, lanceolate, compressed or subterete, greyish white or variegated grey and reddish brown, 10–50-flowered. Glumes 2.5–4 mm long, ovate, greyish white to brown or reddish brown, many-nerved, but the nerves sometimes indistinct; midrib often green and excurrent into a short straight awn. Style 3-branched. Nutlet c. 1.5 x 0.8–1 mm, obovate, obscurely triangular, blackish, minutely papillose.
Syntype of Cyperus conglomeratus Rottb. subspecies curvulus (Boeckeler) Kukkonen [family CYPERACEAE]
Syntype of Cyperus conglomeratus Rottb. subspecies curvulus (Boeckeler) Kukkonen [family CYPERACEAE]
