Perennial (apparently flowering the first year), forming dense tufts of barren shoots mixed with flowering culms and trailing runners; rhizome short, præmorse; innovations extravaginal, covered with silky-tomentose cataphylls; runners slender, many-noded, up to 6 in. long, with tufts of short leaves from the nodes. Culms erect from an ascending or shortly prostrate base, slender, about 3/4–1 1/2 ft. high, simple or with a leafy branch here and there, 8- or more-noded or in first year's specimens only 3- or 4-noded, all the internodes except the upper 2 or 3 shorter than the short sheaths, 1/3– 2/3 in. long, the uppermost very long and long-exserted, glabrous. Leaf-sheaths tight or the lower, which are very short loose, terete or subterete, densely and softly hairy to villous, bearded at the base, the uppermost quite glabrous upwards, hairs spreading, white, fine; ligules short, membranous, rounded; blades linear, tapering to an acute point, those of the culms more or less spreading, 1 to almost 3 in. by 1 1/2–2 lin., flat, soft, glaucous, more or less loosely villous, hairs very fine, margins cartilaginous, scaberulous to spinulously scabrid, lateral nerves obscure or the primary (3 or 4 on each side) slightly prominent. Racemes about 6–10, sessile or subsessile, subdigitate or racemosely arranged with a slender scabrid angular common rhachis (up to 2 in. long), sometimes slightly compound near the base, erect or more or less spreading, very slender, straight, rather loose, about 3 in. long, pale green; rhachis slightly wavy, filiform, triquetrous, 1/10– 1/8 lin. wide, with or without some long extremely fine spreading hairs in the lower part, angles finely marginate, very scabrid, internodes 1 1/2–2 lin. long; pedicels 2–3-nate, or fascicled near the base with very short and scanty secondary branchlets, finely filiform, very unequal, the longer up to 1 1/2 lin. long, angular, scabrid. Spikelets more or less appressed, not imbricate, oblong, subacute, 3/4 lin. long, pale greyish- or brownish-green, delicately silvery-silky. Lower glume a very minute cuff-like hyaline membrane, early disappearing; upper thin, oblong with a delicate hyaline obtuse (flattened out) tip, as long as the spikelet, delicately 5-nerved with 4 lines of extremely fine silvery hairs, hairs curled or circinate upwards. Lower floret: valve similar to the upper glume but broader and finely 7-nerved, the spaces between the midrib and the more prominent innermost side-nerves glabrous, hairs equalling but not exceeding the tips, up to 1/7 lin. long; valvule and lodicules very minute. Upper floret as long as the spikelet, narrowly oblong, subacute, the sides slightly exposed when ripening, pale to brownish when ripe, thinly chartaceous. Anthers 1/2 lin. long.
