Tufted perennial with short vertical rhizome. Culms rigid, erect, biconvex, striate, glabrous, smooth, 60–150 cm high, 3–6 mm wide; margins very scabrous and cutting, yellowish. Leaf-blades similar in form to culms (or rounded on one edge) but shorter, 2.5–5 mm wide; sheaths yellowish near apex, dark grey-brown or blackish at base, not viscid, shining. Inflorescence oblong in outline, narrow, erect, dense, 5–15 cm long, 1–2(–3) cm diam.; involucral bract shorter than inflorescence. Spikelets numerous, 5–9 mm long; glumes 5–7, glabrous, red-brown to grey-brown, the 3 lowest empty, shorter than fertile glumes, acute, mucronate; fertile glumes 5.0–7.0 mm long, long-acute to acute; hypogynous scales 5 or 6, yellowish, from one-quarter to one-half length of nut. Nut narrow-ellipsoid to ellipsoid, pale brown to greyish brown, ± smooth (faintly and minutely trabeculate under the surface), shining, 2.5–3.5 mm long, 1.0–1.5 mm diam. Flowers spring–summer.
EGL, EGU. Also Qld, NSW. Uncommon, confined to near-coastal swamps and wet heath-lands eastward from about Cape Conran.
