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Tussocky annual with a small root-system, or forms with much swollen base perhaps perennial; stems 2–20 cm long and 0.5–1.5 mm thick, triangular, slightly scabrid below the inflorescence, sometimes woody at the very base. Leaf-blades 2–8 cm long and 1–4 mm wide, flat, scabrid on margin and midrib; sheaths pale or grey to purple, up to 10 mm wide, and frequently not enclosing the base all around. Inflorescence a congested anthela with sessile spikelets only; major involucral bract leafy, 1–5 cm long and 0.5–2.5 mm wide, usually longer than the inflorescence; anthela 0.7–2.5 cm in diam., consisting of 3–25 large and sometimes much crowded spikelets. Spikelets 4–15 x 4–6 mm, light to dark reddish brown, linear-lanceolate, squarrose, 12–40-flowered. Glumes 2.5–4 mm long, often of rather different length in each spikelet, ovate, reddish brown to chestnut with 5–8 very narrow paler nerves on each side of the midrib; midrib prominent at apex only, and here paler and excurrent into a short recurved scabrid mucro. Stamens 3. Style unbranched, but often twisted at the apex, or with 2–3 short or long branches. Nutlet 0.9–1.1 x 0.6-0.75 mm, obovate, sharply triangular, greyish, minutely papillose.