A creeping perennial herb forming a loose turf. Rhizomes on soil surface, rather slender, green or dark, flexible, sparsely villous; branches uncommon, usually single at flowering nodes; leaves in two rows, single at the apex, 1-3 cm apart. Short shoots alternate on both sides of the rhizome, with us. only 3 or 4 leaves but often converted into rhizomes with distant leaves. Roots slender and weak, up to 0.6 mm diam. Leaves simple, 1-5 × 0.5-1.5 cm; blade 0.5-1.5 cm long, suborbicular, membranous, yellow-green, without brown pigment, sparsely but evenly covered with long hairs, with a cuneate base and rounded apex, veins not evident on ventral surface, crenate; teeth 9-15 per pinna, around the distal ½ - 2/3 of blade, shallow, broadly triangular, mucronate. Peduncles borne on rhizomes, longer than leaves, 2-6 cm, nude or with 1 simple bract, villous. Monoecious, each plant with a mixture of staminate and bisexual heads. Heads 5-7 mm diam.; surface convex; involucre hemispherical; phyllaries 6-12 in 1-2 subequal rows, broadly elliptic, green, villous, with a broad, sts brown-tipped, scarious margin; inner phyllaries grow a little after anthesis to incompletely enclose the head; pistillate florets often 0, us. less than 5 but up to 12, in 1 incomplete row, ca. 2.0 mm long, slightly curved, yellowgreen; corolla equal in length and width, with unequal teeth; staminate florets much more numerous, 40-90. Achenes up to 1.9 × 1.1 mm, not or slightly compressed, in section ± round, with a pale unwrinkled papery surface turning brown and smooth. Flowers in summer.