Perennial, compactly cæspitose with woolly-tomentose bases. Culms erect, slender, simple, about 3-noded, glabrous. Leaves glabrous; lower sheaths tight, firm, long-persistent, upper looser, finely striate, very smooth; ligules reduced to a membranous glabrous rim; blades linear, long-tapering to a fine point, imperceptibly passing into the sheath, of the lower leaves erect and 6–9 in. by 1 lin., of the uppermost very much shorter, flat, glaucous-green, firm, midrib indistinct, merged in the close slender somewhat prominent general nervation. Racemes peduncled, solitary and scattered or opposite or 2–3-nate on a very slender common axis at irregular distances, gathered into a graceful lax oblong or pyramidal panicle (6 in. by 3–3 1/2 in.), very slender, rather loose, obliquely to almost horizontally spreading and slightly curved up to almost 3 in. long; peduncle finely filiform, terete, 1– 1/4 in. long; rhachis compressed, angular, 1/10– 1/5 lin. wide, lateral angles scabrid, internodes about 2 lin. long; pedicels mostly 2-nate, sometimes 3-nate or solitary, unequal, the longer up to 1 1/2 lin. long finely filiform, scabrid and upwards shortly setulose with obscurely discoid tips. Spikelets very loosely appressed, lanceolate, acutely acuminate, 1 1/2 lin. long, green, tinged with purple, purplish-silky. Lower glume 0; upper narrowly lanceolate, subacute, 7/10– 8/10 lin. long, thinly membranous, 3-nerved, with lines of rather stiff appressed (permanently?) purple pointed hairs between the nerves and along the margins about 1/3 lin. long. Lower floret corresponding in outline and size to the spikelet: valve firmly membranous, longitudinally slightly and narrowly depressed with the rounded sides somewhat bulging, sub-7-nerved, mid-nerve fine, prominent, smooth, outer pair of lateral nerves very close, almost fused into one (but the vascular strands distinct), a dense line of hairs (like those of the upper glume) on the inner side of the inner side-nerves, starting from the base or higher up, and another along the margins forming an appressed purple fringe which is produced into a short brush-like point beyond the tip of the floret; valvule and lodicules minute. Upper floret lanceolate, acutely acuminate, slightly shorter than the spikelet, thinly chartaceous, pale or often with purple sides, margins of valve contiguous or slightly overlapping in flower.
