Plants with slender, long creeping rhizomes and bunches of shoots forming loose tufts. Culms 5-20 cm tall, slender, smooth, clothed at base with gray-brown sheaths disintegrating into fibers. Leaves shorter than culm, blades linear, 1-1.5 mm wide, involute, stiff, margins slightly scabrous. Involucral bracts glumelike. Inflorescence ovate or globose, 5-15 × ca. 5 mm; spikes 3-6, androgynous, ovate, dense, 4-6 mm. Female glumes ferruginous-brown, broadly ovate or elliptic, 3-3.2 mm, white hyaline on margins and apex, apex acute or obtuse. Utricles ferruginous or yellow-brown, shorter to slightly longer than glume, ovate, ovate-elliptic, or broadly ovate, plano-convex, 3-4.5 × ca. 2 mm, leathery, slightly lustrous at maturity, many veined on both faces, base subrounded, spongy, thickly stipitate, apex abruptly contracted into a short scabrous beak, orifice white hyaline, obliquely truncate, shallowly cleft abaxially. Nutlets slightly loosely enveloped, suborbicular or broadly elliptic, 1.5-2 × 1.5-1.7 mm; style base thickened; stigmas 2. Fl. and fr. Apr-Jun.

Grasslands, slopes, wet places or rocky and sandy areas on riverbanks, roadsides, semidry regions, meadows; (below 100-)200-700 m. Gansu, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Henan, Jilin, Liaoning, Nei Mongol, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanxi, Xinjiang, Xizang [Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, New Guinea, Pakistan, Russia (Far East, Siberia), Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan; SW Asia, North America].