Perennials, stoloniferous. Culms single to few tufted, 15-75 cm tall, 1-3 mm thick but to 4 mm thick at base, shiny, sharply ribbed, transversely septate between ribs and becoming tuberculate when dry. Leaf sheaths 1 or 2, purplish red, 1-8 cm, scarious, mouth obliquely truncate and with a deep slit on ventral side, apex obtuse. Spikelet narrowly cylindric-ovate to cylindric, 1-2.5 cm × 2-4 mm, many flowered, apex acuminate. Basal 2 glumes empty, opposite, amplexicaul for 1/2 or more of spikelet base; fertile glumes greenish medially and with a narrow blood-red band on sides, laxly imbricate, sublanceolate to ovate-lanceolate, ca. 3 × 1.5 mm, midvein obscure, margin broadly hyaline, apex acute. Perianth bristles 4, ± as long as nutlet, slightly curved, laxly retrorsely spinulose, sometimes spreading. Stigmas 2. Nutlet yellow, broadly obovoid to globose-obovoid, 1-1.3 × ca. 1 mm, biconvex, smooth; persistent style base shortly conic to half-oblong, as long as or slightly longer than wide, 1/3-1/2 as long and nearly as wide as nutlet, spongy, apex rounded. Fl. and fr. May-Jul.

Lake banks, marshes, meadows, reed thickets; 500-1000 m. Xinjiang [Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan; SW Asia].