Plants perennial, cespitose, 70-110 cm. Culms erect to excurved, slender, often stiffish. Inflorescences: spikelet clusters mostly dense, branches spreading to erect, stiffish; subtending leafy bracts and bractlets, mostly exceeding clusters. Spikelets prevalently ovoid to broadly ellipsoid, 3-4 mm, apex acute; fertile scales broadly ovate to obovate or suborbiculate, sometimes cupulate, 2.5-3.5 mm, apex acute to rounded or emarginate, often mucronate. Flowers: perianth bristles 6, reaching at most to fruit midbody. Fruits 1(-2) per spikelet, 2-2.4 mm; body usually deep brown, lustrous, tumidly obovoid to suborbicular, 1.5-1.7 mm, with many fine, undulate lines of minute, isodiametric to short-rectangular pits or very finely reticulate, appearing nearly smooth; tubercle distinctly buttressed, low conic 0.3-0.5(-0.7) mm.

Fruiting spring-summer. Sands or sandy clays in open areas in pinelands, flatwoods, savannas, and prairies, often in dry or seasonally dry places; 0-400 m; Ala., Ark., Fla., Ga., Kans., La., Miss., Mo., N.C., Okla., S.C., Tenn., Tex., Va.