perennial, very densely tufted with closely packed innovation-shoots; culms erect or geniculate, slender, simple, very rarely branched above the base, 1/2–1 1/2 ft. long, subcompressed, glabrous, or very rarely scantily hairy, smooth, usually 2-noded, internodes exserted, uppermost very long; lower sheaths crowded, very short, firm, adpressedly hairy to tomentose at the very base or quite glabrous, persistent, upper tight, glabrous, or with few fine scattered hairs, long-bearded at the mouth; ligule a fringe of short hairs; blades very narrow, filiform-convolute, capillary above, flexuous, 3–6 in. long, rarely longer, 1/2–1 lin. broad when expanded, somewhat rigid, glaucous, glabrous or scantily hairy, scaberulous or scabrid on the upper face and all over towards the tips, otherwise smooth; panicle open, ovoid or pyramidal, lax, 2–8 in. long, erect, rather rigid; axis filiform, smooth; lower branches in whorls of 5–3, or 2-nate, rarely all solitary, spreading, finely filiform, straight or subflexuous, glabrous or sometimes with a few fine hairs at the axils, longest 1 1/2–4 in. long, undivided for 1/3–1 in. from the base, then very loosely and at length divaricately branched, smooth, or the ultimate divisions scaberulous; pedicels capillary, the lateral 1–3 lin. long; spikelets scattered, linear, acute, 2–4 lin. by 1/2– 3/4 lin., loosely 5–13-flowered, dark olive-grey to slate-grey; rhachilla subpersistent, then disarticulating, very slender, flexuous, smooth, or almost so, joints up to 3/8 lin. long; glumes unequal, deciduous, lanceolate to lanceolate-oblong in profile, thinly acute or subacute, membranous or hyaline, 1-nerved, scaberulous on the nerve, lower 1/2– 3/4 lin., upper 3/4–1 lin. long; valves obliquely oblong in profile, subacute to acute, 3/4– 7/8 lin. long, membranous, smooth, side-nerves fine; pales equal to the valves, obtuse, keels fine, smooth or nearly so; anthers about 2/5 lin. long; grain oblong-ellipsoid, obtusely quadrangular, 1/2 lin. long, brown; embryo large. null
