Leaves lanceolate-linear, 4--5 cm, 3--3.5 mm wide at middle, glabrous, veins 10--14. Scapes 3--5(--9), 25--40 cm, 4- or 5-ribbed; sheath 5.5--8 cm; heads brownish, globose, 5--7 mm in diam.; receptacle villous; involucral bracts straw-colored, obovate-elliptic, ca. 2.5 × 1.4--1.8 mm, glabrous; floral bracts oblanceolate to obovate, apex acuminate, inner ones abaxially white clavate hairy toward apex. Male flowers: sepals spathelike, abaxially hairy toward 3-lobed apex; petals 3, oblong to lanceolate, anterior one slightly larger than others, adaxially hairy toward apex, abaxially hairy, gland usually absent or present only on lateral petals; anthers black. Female flowers: sepals 3, free, hairy at margin and abaxially toward apex, posterior sepal narrowly keeled, lateral ones boatlike, keeled; petals 3, linear-oblanceolate, unequal, membranous, hairy, gland absent or present only on lateral petals; ovary 3-loculed; style 3-cleft. Seeds ellipsoid, ca. 0.6 mm; testa hexagonally reticulate, prickles 2 or 3 per cell, toothlike. Fl. and fr. Nov--Dec.

* Marshlands; ca. 1100 m. SW Yunnan (Shuangjiang Xian).