Rush-like; rhizome short, up to 4 mm. diam. Culms (40)–50–100–(120) cm. × c. 1mm., very thickly crowded, erect or drooping, light green, shining. Lvs reduced to sheathing mucronate bracts, dark red-purple, almost black, the mucro more elongated in the uppermost bracts; mouth of sheath fringed with cobwebby hairs. Panicle (1.5)–4–10–(12) cm. long, very narrow, with ± distant fascicles of 3–4 branchlets, each fascicle subtended by a sheath 0.5–1.5 mm. long, ciliate at the mouth; branchlets flexuous, laterally compressed and toothed along edges, each bearing a solitary spikelet or branched again. Spikelets 5–8 mm. long, 2–4-fld, linear-lanceolate, dark brown, almost black. Glumes 10–13, ovate-lanceolate, acute, margins ciliate towards the apex with tangled woolly hairs, the lower 6–8 glumes shorter, empty, 2–4 succeeding glumes fertile, the 2 upper glumes empty. Hypog. bristles 3–6, threadlike, < or > nut. Stamens 2. Style-branches 2, occ. 3. Nut c. 1.5 × 1mm., unequally biconvex, obovoid, obtuse to retuse, smooth, pale cream or light brown.