English: Introduced, warm season, perennial sedge, sometimes producing short stolons or rhizomes. Culms are mostly tufted, rounded, grooved, 5–15 cm long and about 0.5 mm diam. Spikelets are ovoid or oblong-ovoid, 3–7 mm long. Glumes are rather prominently keeled, about 1.7 mm long and straw-coloured tinged dark red-brown. Bristles are 5–7, unequal, shorter or longer than nut, retrorsely scabrous, whitish and strongly united at the base. Stamens 2. Style 2-fid. Nuts are rather turgidly biconvex, with angles ± ribbed, obovoid, shining, minutely reticulate, 0.8–1 mm long and pale green to dark greenish brown. Flowering is from spring to summer and often occurs in the first year. A native of Africa and Madagascar, it grows in swamps and sandy shores of coastal lakes.