Herbs, annual, densely cespitose, scapose. Culms (5-) 10-20 cm. Leaves 1/2-2/3 length of culms; sheaths brownish to stramineous, glabrous or scabrid along ribs; blades spreading-recurved, filiform, 0.5 mm wide, involute, margins and adaxial ribs hispidulous. Inflorescences: scapes erect to spreading, wiry, angularly ribbed, 0.6-1 mm thick, hispidulous; spikelets in dense, terminal, top-shaped to hemispheric involucrate heads, 1-1.5 cm wide; longer involucral bracts with setaceous blades many times exceeding heads, gradually dilating to scarious-bordered, entire sheaths. Spikelets usually greenish or dull brown, oblong to lance-ovoid, 3-5 mm; fertile scales ovate, keeled, 3-4 mm, abaxially hirtellous, midrib excurrent forming excurved mucro, scabrid. Flowers: stamens 1; anthers oblong, 0.5 mm. Achenes pale or gray brown, broadly trigonous obovoid, rather sharply 3-ribbed, 1 mm, faces flat or somewhat concave, finely transversely rugose; tubercle a depressed-conic button. 2n = 30.

Fruiting summer-fall. Moist sands or sandy peats of sandhill swales, fields, pineland savanna, and waste areas, often weedy; 0-200 m; Fla., Ga., N.C., S.C.; West Indies (Cuba).