Plants perennial, cespitose, 100-150 cm; rhizomes absent. Culms erect to excurved ascending, narrowly linear to ± filiform, terete to obscurely trigonous, leafy, densely so toward base, stiff to rather lax. Leaves overtopped by culm; blades linear, ascending, proximally flat, 1-4 mm wide, apex trigonous, subulate, tapering gradually. Inflorescences: spikelet clusters 1-3(-4), proximal mostly widely spaced, dense, broadly turbinate to hemispheric, to 2 cm broad; leafy bracts subulate, exceeding proximal spikelets, slightly or not exceeding most distal clusters. Spikelets red brown, narrowly ovoid, (3-)3.5-5 mm, apex acute; fertile scales ovate, 3-3.5(-4) mm, apex acute, mostly with cusp or mucro 0.5-1 mm. Flowers: bristles 5-6, from rudimentary to reaching tubercle tip, or (rarely) beyond, antrorsely barbellate. Fruits 1-3 per spikelet, (1.5-)2-2.2(-2.5) mm; body dark brown with pale center, lenticular, broadly ellipsoid to ± orbicular, (1.3-)1.5-1.7(-1.9) × 1-1.5 mm, margins pale, narrow or narrowly rounded, flowing to tubercle; surfaces dull, minutely longitudinally striate; tubercle compressed, triangular to triangular subulate, 0.5-0.7(-0.9) mm. Fruiting late spring-fall or all year (south). Sands and peats of interdunal swales, depressions in savannas, open flatwoods, and seep-bog edges; 0-100 m; Ala., Fla., Ga., La., Miss., N.C., S.C., Tex., Va.; Bermuda; Central America. In her revision, S. Gale (1944) treated var. distans as the more slender version of the species, one with a smaller inflorescence, more distinctly margined fruit body, and consistently elongate perianth bristles. All those character states appear to vary independently over the total range of the species.