Rhizome with long and rather thick stolons. Culms 30-50 cm tall, triquetrous, scabrous on upper part, clothed with red-brown and bladeless sheaths at base, remnant sheaths usually disintegrating into reticulate fibers. Leaves shorter than culm, blades 3-5 mm wide, flat or slightly plicate, with distinctly transverse septate nodes between veins, sheathed. Involucral bracts leafy, longer than inflorescence, lowermost involucral bract shortly sheathed, upper involucral bracts not sheathed. Spikes 3 or 4; terminal 1 or 2 spikes male, approximate, narrowly clavate, 1.5-2 cm, nearly sessile; remaining spikes female, remote, cylindric, 2-4 × 0.5-0.6 cm, densely many flowered and laxly flowered at base, shortly pedunculate, lowermost peduncle ca. 1 cm. Female glumes brown laterally, brownish at middle, ovate, ca. 3 mm, 3-veined, apex acuminate. Utricles orange or ferruginous, usually brown flecked, obliquely patent, longer than glume, ovoid or broadly ovoid, biconvex, 3-4 mm, leathery, shiny, thinly several veined abaxially, base rounded, apex abruptly contracted into a slightly broad and short beak, orifice shortly 2-toothed. Nutlets elliptic or ovate-elliptic, trigonous, ca. 2 mm, base shortly stipitate, apex mucronate; style base flexuose, not thickened; stigmas 3. Fl. and fr. Apr-Jun.

Salt grasslands; below 100-3000 m. Xinjiang [Afghanistan, India, NW Mongolia, Russia; SW Asia (Iran)].