Medium-sized somewhat tussocky perennial with a few crowded stems with swollen stem bases from a very short woody rhizome; roots without tomentum; stems 10–30 cm long and 1–2 mm thick, terete to obtusely triangular, minutely or prominently scabrid at least on some ridges. Leaves from the lower 1–6 cm only, c. 5–8 per stem; upper sheaths pale with distinct auricles, the lower brown, sometimes splitting up into fibres; blades 5–20 cm long and 2–3 mm wide, flat but strongly folded or inrolled when dry; margin and lower surface densely set with minute prickles or projections in numerous longitudinal rows, but without a midrib, upper surface smooth. Inflorescence a dense head of crowded spikelets 2–2.5 cm in diam. or more commonly consisting of 1 dense head of spikelets with 1–7 additional stalked heads or digitate clusters of spikelets on up to 3 cm long peduncles; involucral bracts usually 3–5, up to c. 10 cm long and 2–3 mm wide, spreading or reflexed, similar to the leaf-blades. Spikelets 7–9 x 3–5 mm, ovate with acute apex, compressed, 15–20-flowered with very densely crowded glumes. Glumes 3–4 mm long, broadly ovate with obtuse apex, medium reddish brown with or without an irregular paler margin and apical part; midrib light brown to greenish, excurrent into a short thick mucro c. 0.3 mm long; lateral nerves slender, 3–4 on each side of the midrib. Style with 3 slender branches. Nutlet c. 1.2 mm long and wide, rounded to squarish, flat and strongly curved with the adaxial side prominently concave and the abaxial side convex, medium reddish brown, smooth or minutely papillose.