Plants perennial, densely cespitose, 10-30 cm; rhizomes absent. Culms lax, erect to excurved, leafy toward base, filiform. Leaves overtopped by scape; blades filiform, distally flattened, channeled, tapering, to 1 mm wide, margins strongly involute, apex blunt. Inflorescences: spikelet clusters 1-3, laterals widely spaced, all narrowly turbinate, ellipsoid, or ovoid; leafy bracts setaceous, overtopping proximal clusters, often overtopped by terminal ones. Spikelets erect or ascending, red brown, lanciform, mostly 4.5-5 mm, apex acute; fertile scales lanceolate, (3-)4-4.5 mm, apex acute, apiculate. Flowers: perianth absent. Fruits 2-3(-5) per spikelet; stipe and receptacle 0.1-0.2(-0.3) mm, setose; body brown with pale glassy center, narrowly obovoid ellipsoid, lenticular, 1.2-1.5 mm, margins narrow, flowing to tubercle; surfaces very finely lined longitudinally, transversely with wavy lines of tiny pits; tubercle narrowly triangular or slightly concave sided, flattened, 0.7-1.2(-1.5) mm.

Fruiting summer-fall. Sands and peats of bogs, pineland pond shores, seeps, and low moist savannas; 0-100 m; Ala., Fla., Miss.