perennial, tufted; culms usually repeatedly geniculate; sometimes prostrate at the base and rooting from the nodes, branched, with the branches often fascicled, slender, 1 to more than 2 ft. long, glabrous or smooth, rather wiry, more or less compressed, 4-noded, internodes exserted, uppermost the longest; lower sheaths short, close, firm, softly hairy to villous at the very base, persistent, upper tight, glabrous, long bearded at the mouth; ligule a fringe of short hairs; blades very narrow linear, tapering to a fine rigid point, usually filiform convolute, sometimes subulate and pungent, 2–6 in. by 3/4–1 lin., rarely longer; very rigid to subflexuous, glabrous, smooth below, scaberulous on the upper side; panicle open, ovoid to oblong, lax, 3–6 in. by 1–3 in., erect, or slightly nodding; axis filiform, smooth; lower branches 2-nate or sometimes whorled, or all solitary, unequally distant, spreading, at least ultimately, finely filiform, straight and rather rigid or subflexuous, glabrous or with hairs in the axils, longest 1–2 1/2 in. long, undivided for 1/6– 1/2 in. from the base, then loosely and (at length) subdivaricately branched, smooth or the ultimate divisions scaberulous; pedicels fine, the lateral rarely over 1 lin. long; spikelets linear, acute, 2–4 lin. by 1/2 lin., closely 4–13-flowered, dark olive-grey; rhachilla subpersistent, then dis-articulating, very slender, flexuous, smooth or almost so, joints 1/2 lin. long; glumes more or less unequal, lanceolate-oblong to oblong in profile, subacute to obtuse, very thin to subhyaline, scaberulous, 1-nerved or almost nerveless, margins minutely serrulate, lower about 2/3 lin., upper 3/4 lin. long; valves oblong in profile, rounded on the back, closely imbricate with the tips adpressed, obtuse, scarcely 1/8 lin. long, membranous, pallid towards the base, minutely scaberulous above the middle, side-nerves faint, sometimes whitish, keel obscure below, more distinct and scaberulous near the tip; pales equal to the valves, keels fine and scaberulous; anthers 3/8– 2/5 lin. long; grain obovoid-subellipsoid, obtusely quandrangular, over 1/4 lin. by 1/5 lin., light brown. null
