Lepidosperma carphoides

Tufted perennial with short rhizome. Culms rigid, erect, terete but 1-grooved, glabrous, smooth, 20–60 cm high, 0.5–1.0 mm diam. Leaf-blades similar in form to culms or somewhat compressed, shorter than to equalling culms, 0.5–0.9 mm diam., or reduced; sheaths dark yellow-brown to grey-brown, not viscid, ± dull. Inflorescence fan-shaped to oblong in outline, erect, rachis often flexuose between the distant clusters of spikelets, 1.5–4 cm long, 1–1.5 cm diam.; involucral bract shorter than inflorescence, obvious, enclosing lowest spikelets, blackish (bract at the base of each cluster of spikelets similar). Spikelets few, 8–12 mm long; glumes 4, long-acute, mucronate, glabrous, dark red-brown to blackish, the 1 or 2 lowest empty, about same length as fertile glumes, which are 5–7 mm long; hypogynous scales 6, yellowish to red-brown, c. one-third length of nut. Nut narrow-obovoid to narrow-ellipsoid, whitish to red-brown, smooth, shining, 3.3–4.7 mm long, 1.5–2.0 mm diam Flowers spring.