perennial, tufted; culms densely fascicled with numerous innovation shoots from a descending rhizome (covered with papery scales), distichously leafy all along, slender, 1/2–1 ft. long, pubescent below the panicle, otherwise glabrous, smooth, many-noded, internodes all enclosed or sometimes the intermediate and upper shortly exserted; leaves glaucous, finely hairy to glabrous; sheaths very tight, striate, scantily bearded at the mouth, lower short, firm, persistent, lowest bladeless or with minute mucro-like blades; ligule a minute, ciliolate rim; blades convolute-subulate from a usually almost flat base, spinously pungent, 1/2–2 in. by 1–1 1/2 lin. (at the base), rigid to very rigid, scabrid along the margins and towards the tips; panicle linear to obovate-oblong, contracted, dense, erect, 1–2 in. long, light green; rhachis angular, scabrid, very finely puberulous and sometimes also with scattered long hairs; branches solitary or geminate, adpressed or obliquely erect, subsecund, bearing spikelets from the base or almost so, angular, scabrid and finely puberulous, lowest 1/3–1 in. long; pedicels very short; spikelets closely imbricate, lanceolate, acute, 2–3 1/2 lin. long, closely 3–7-flowered; glumes subequal, lanceolate, acute, membranous, margins and tips hyaline, keel smooth or scaberulous, upper 1 1/2–2 lin. long, lowest slightly shorter; valves oblong to lanceolate in profile, acute, entire or very minutely 2-toothed, mucronulate from or close to the tip, rigidly membranous, smooth, 3-nerved, side-nerves and keel silky-ciliate, the former to the middle or beyond, the latter scarcely to the middle, scabrid above, or upper valves almost glabrous; pales oblong, obtuse, 1–1 1/4 lin. long, keels scabrid, flaps glabrous or hairy; lodicules cuneate, fleshy, small; anthers 1/2 lin. long. null
