Japan Flora: Rhizomes slender, elongate; culms 30-60 cm. long, usually loosely pilose; leaf-blades 5-10 mm. wide, flat, abruptly acumi­nate, soft, loosely pilose or sometimes glabrous, deep green, the basal sheaths (at least the lower ones) bladeless and dark purplish sanguineous; spikes 3 or 4, distant, the terminal staminate, linear-clavate, 10-20 mm. long, long-peduncled and much overtopping the next one, the lateral pistillate, cylindric, 2-3 cm. long, loosely flowered, the lower ones long-peduncled, the bracts leaflike, usually pilose, long-sheathing; pistillate scales ovate, acute, dark reddish purple; perigynia longer than the scales, ovoid, 4-5 mm. long, obtusely 3-angled, light green, membranous, glabrous, weakly nerved, abruptly rather long- beaked, with an obliquely truncate, emarginate, membranous apex; stigmas 3. June-July. Woods.

Hokkaido, Honshu (n. distr. south to Yechigo Prov.); rare.  Sakhalin, Korea, and westw. to n. Europe.