Plants perennial, cespitose, 40-80 cm; rhizomes absent. Culms erect, trigonous, multiribbed, rather stiff. Principal leaves overtopped by culm; blades narrowly linear, proximally flat, (1.5-)2-3.5 mm wide, apex tapering, trigonous. Inflorescences: spikelet clusters 1-3, turbinate to hemispheric, 1.5-3 cm wide; subtending leafy bracts mostly exceeded by distal compound. Spikelets pale brown to nearly white, fusiform, 4-5(-7) mm, apex narrowly acute; fertile scales elliptic, 3.5-4 mm, apex narrowly acute, midrib excurrent as mucro. Flowers: perianth bristles (15-)18-20, reaching tubercle tip, retrorsely barbellate. Fruits 1 per spikelet, 2.5-3.2 mm; body brown with pale center, obovoid distal to short stipe, lenticular, 1.7-2.2 × 0.8-1.5, margins narrow, wirelike, flowing into tubercle edges; tubercle flat, narrowly triangular-subulate, 0.8-1 mm.

Fruiting late summer-fall. Sands and sandy peats of savanna bogs and seeps, pinelands; 0-200 m; Ala., Fla., Ga., La., Miss., N.C., S.C., Tex.; Central America (Nicaragua).