2n = 46

Usually dark green tufts to 90 cm high. Leaves soft, double-folded. Inflorescence of 5-7 sessile, light reddish-brown spikes, ± 4 cm × 5 mm, terminal male spikes usually partly female. Glumes membranous. Utricles often scabrid on both surfaces of upper half. Stigmas 2.

Densely tufted, dark green or rarely yellow-green. Culms (20)–50–90–(120) cm. × 0.5–1 mm., trigonous, glab. at base, scabrid below infl., at maturity elongating, much > lvs and drooping from above; basal sheaths dark grey-brown. Lvs < culms, 2–4 mm. wide, double-folded, soft, grassy, margins very finely scabrid. Infl. of 5–7 sessile spikes, closely contiguous at the top of the culm, rarely a slender spikelet on a long filiform peduncle arises from the axil of the uppermost lf; upper 1–(2) spikes occ. wholly male, more often female in the upper part, or female throughout; remaining spikes smaller, all female, 1–4 cm. × 4–7 mm. Glumes (excluding awn) = or < utricles, very broadly ovate, often emarginate, membr., colourless with few to ∞ small red-brown striae, the pale cream midrib produced to a finely scabrid awn. Utricles 2–3 × c. 1.5 mm., plano-convex, elliptic-obovoid, light reddish brown, us. with very distinct pale brown nerves, slightly winged, us. scabrid on the margins and often on both surfaces of the upper half; beak 0.5–1 mm. long, bifid, orifice finely scabrid; stipe c. 0.3 mm. long, pale cream. Stigmas 2. Nut c. .5 mm. long, biconvex, obovoid, light to dark brown.