Perennial, up to over 3 ft. high, tufted from a short oblique rhizome; innovations intra- and extra-vaginal, with firm glabrous cataphylls. Culms erect, sometimes from an arching base, wiry or woody and solid below, glabrous and smooth, simple below for 4–6 nodes below the panicle, with mixed or barren erect branches from some of the lower nodes. Leaf-sheaths of the innovations compressed and keeled, otherwise terete, glabrous and smooth, tight, the lower usually longer than the internodes, at length slipping off or decaying with the exception of the long-persistent dark bases; ligules scarious, truncate, up to over 1 lin. long, ciliolate or glabrous; blades linear from a more or less narrowed base, long-tapering to a fine point, up to 6 or 8 in. by 1–3 lin., slightly flaccid or rigid, flat, glaucous, glabrous or with a few long fine spreading hairs near the base, smooth, or rough upwards, margins scabrid, midrib slender on the back, whitish and wider on the upper side, lateral nerves indistinctly raised. Spatheate panicle elongated, usually scanty, lax, 1/2 ft. to 1 1/2 (rarely 2) ft. long, of 1–7 distant 2–4- (rarely 5- or 6-) rayed tiers or with the lowest branch undivided at the base and 2–3-noded; simple rays subfastigiate, very slender, filiform, 1 1/2 to over 4 in. long, often more or less kneed at the nodes; subtending leaves with usually well developed blades, herbaceous to subherbaceous, glabrous, greenish. Spatheoles linear-lanceolate, tapering to an acute point, 1 1/4–2 1/4 in. long, usually glabrous or more or less hairy, early turning reddish or red, at length loosely inrolled; peduncles at length 1 3/4 to almost 3 in. long, subterminally long-exserted and mostly recurved in a semicircle, pubescent upwards, the curvature beset with stiff spreading tubercle-based whitish hairs up to 3 lin. long. Racemes somewhat diverging, rarely at right angles, at length epinastically reflexed, more or less silky villous, 8–14 lin. long, 7–15-awned per pair; bases very short, pubescent in the fork, upwards hirsute, tips with a minute dark auricle; joints and pedicels filiform, slender, almost 1 1/2 lin. long, with obliquely truncate tips, densely ciliate, cilia up to 1 lin. long. Homogamous pair of spikelets 1 at the base of the lower raceme only. Fertile spikelets linear-oblong to linear-lanceolate, 2 1/2–2 3/4 lin. long, pale below, reddish upwards; callus very short, subobtuse to almost acute, beard dense, white, 1/2– 3/4 lin. long. Glumes equal, lower subchartaceous, minutely truncate, flat on the back, thinner downwards, 7–9-nerved, loosely to densely whitish-villous upwards, margins subinflexed upwards, rigidly ciliate along the subterminal keels; upper glume thinner, submembranous, subtruncate, 3-nerved, hairy along the keel. Lower floret reduced to a linear-oblong subobtuse hyaline 2-nerved ciliolate valve, almost as long as the glumes. Upper floret hermaphrodite: valve stipitate, 1 1/2 lin. long, with two short glabrous subacute lobes; awn slender, 8–12 lin. long, with the column fulvously or rufously hirtellous; valvule 0. Anthers over 3/4 lin. long. Grain elliptic-oblong, dorsally much compressed, 1 1/4 lin. long; embryo half as long. Pedicelled spikelets lanceolate-oblong, acute, muticous, 2 1/2–3 1/2 lin. long; glumes equal, hairy, the lower about 9-nerved, upper 3-nerved; valves slightly shorter than the glumes, membranous to hyaline, linear-oblong to linear, ciliolate, the lower 3-, the upper, which is very narrow, 1-nerved; anthers 1 1/2 lin. long.
