perennial, herbaceous; culms geniculately ascending from a sometimes prostrate and often copiously branched base, 1–2 ft. long, slender, glabrous, rarely minutely villous below; flowering branches 6–8-noded; sheaths tight or the lower at length loosened, glabrous or reversedly pubescent to finely villous, often scantily and very finely bearded at the mouth; ligules very short, ciliolate; blades linear, tapering to an acute point, 1–4 in. by 1–3 lin., usually flat, often spreading, glabrous and smooth, or scaberulous to finely villous above; panicle erect, very narrow, 1–4 in. long, subsecund, reduced to a scanty raceme; rhachis filiform, flexuous, glabrous, smooth below; pedicels solitary or 2-nate, subcapillary, glabrous, smooth or almost so, unequal, up to 4 lin. long, flexuous; spikelets nodding, oblong, 2 1/2–3 lin. long, pallid; glumes equal, lanceolate-oblong, acute to mucronate-acuminate, glabrous, 5–7-nerved, slightly shorter than the valves or equalling them; barren valves oblong, obtuse or truncate, lower slightly shorter, narrower, 5–7-nerved, with a callous ridge and a very minute beard at the base, upper 7-nerved, transversely rugose in the upper part, with a large semilunar appendage and a short beard on each side of the base; fertile valve subobliquely oblong, truncate, intermediate in length between the two preceding valves, glabrous, 7-nerved with a knob on each side of the base; lodicules glabrous; stamens 6; anthers 1 lin. long. null
