Perennial with short, stout rhizome. Culms erect, rigid, terete, nodeless, 12–30 cm high, c. 1 mm diam. Leaves with blade to 1.5 cm long; sheath yellow-brown to red-brown, smooth, shining; mouth woolly; ligule ciliate. Inflorescence narrow, erect, 2–4 cm long, with spikelets clustered at c. 3 nodes; lowest involucral bract to 1.2 cm long. Spikelets ovate, acute, 1–2-flowered, 8–13 mm long; glumes 4–6, lowest 3 or 4 empty, acute, very dark red-brown to blackish, dull to glistening, with margins woolly at apex, hyaline below; fertile glumes 7–8 mm long; hypogynous bristles absent. Nut trigonous, obovoid to obpyriform, prominently 3-ribbed, wrinkled, glabrous, dull, whitish to red-brown, 1.5–2 mm long, c. 0.8 mm diam. Flowers spring–summer.
LoM, MuM. Also WA, SA. Apparently confined to rather remote, central areas of the Big Desert, where occurring in mallee-heath associations, on sandy soils.
