Carex bicolor is a tufted perennial sedge growing to a height of about 7 to 12 cm (3 to 5 in).

The floral scale is shorter than the perigynium that surrounds the achene and has brown or reddish-black edges with a green midvein.

In North America it is present in most of Canada, Greenland,[4][5] in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands.

Its southerly limit is the mountains of Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland and Austria.

[1] Carex bicolor was one of several species of plant not previously known in Britain, that were "discovered" growing on the island of Rùm in the Inner Hebrides in the 1940s by the botanist John William Heslop-Harrison, Professor of Botany at Durham University.