perennial, compactly tufted; innovation shoots intravaginal; culms slender, erect, 1–3 ft. long, glabrous, smooth, simple below, 4–6- (rarely 3-) noded, longest internode 6–10 in. long, rarely longer; sheaths tight, shorter than the internodes except the lowermost, which are fugaciously hairy to tomentose at the very base, 1 1/2–3 in. long, firm and persistent, the upper usually much shorter; ligules firm, very short, up to 1 lin. long, rounded; blades very narrow, linear, filiform or setaceous in the upper part, 4–8 in. by 1/2–1 1/2 lin., flat or partly folded, rather rigid below, flexuous above, glabrous, glaucous, margins scabrid; panicles narrow, rather lax, usually scantily branched, 3–6 in. long; racemes 2/3–1 in. long, at length horizontally spreading or deflexed on slender peduncles, which are 3–5 lin. long and subtended by lanceolate, acuminate, many-nerved, scarious, reddish spathes, 3/4–1 1/4 in. long; joints and pedicels linear, slender, 1–1 1/2 lin. long, densely hairy along the margins, tips cupular, irregularly toothed; spikelets of the lowest pair of the sessile raceme alike, ♂, the sessile of all the other pairs hermaphrodite, the pedicelled ♂; hermaphrodite spikelets very narrow, lanceolate, acute, 3 lin. long; lower glume chartaceous, acute or 2-toothed, more or less concave between the keels which are rounded and smooth near the base, obscurely winged and scabrid towards the reddish or purplish tips, intracarinal nerves 2–5, the middle one or all evanescent below; upper glume subchartaceous, lanceolate, acute, 1-nerved, glabrous; valves hyaline; lower linear, 2–2 1/2 lin. long, ciliate; upper slightly shorter, linear-oblong to linear, deeply bifid, lobes lanceolate to subulate, awn slender, 5–8 lin. long, kneed at or below the middle; pale 0; anthers 1 1/2 lin. long; pedicelled spikelets dorsally depressed, lanceolate, acuminate, 3–3 1/4 lin. long, purplish; lower glume many-nerved, keels scabrid; upper 3–5-nerved, with or without a median keel; lower valve linear-lanceolate, 2 1/2 lin. long, 2-nerved, ciliate; upper and pale 0. null
