Caespitose perennial without rhizomes or stolons; culms up to 120 cm tall, erect, unbranched, glabrous at the nodes, eglandular; basal leaf sheaths glabrous, chartaceous, suffused with red (the inner ones usually yellow), compressed and keeled, eglandular, persistent; ligule a line of hairs; leaf laminas 10–90 cm long, c. 1.5 mm in diameter, tightly involute and setaceous, glabrous, eglandular.Panicle 10–70 cm long, narrowly elliptic-ovate to linear-lanceolate, loose and ± open, the spikelets loosely condensed about the branchlets on pedicels 5–8 mm long, the primary branches 1–6 at a node but not obviously whorled, terminating in a fertile spikelet, glabrous in the axils, eglandular.Spikelets 4.5–8 × 1–1.5 mm, linear, lightly laterally compressed, 5–11-flowered, the florets disarticulating from below upwards, the rhachilla tough; glumes subequal, 1.3–2.5 mm long, reaching to between 1/3 and 3/4 the way along the adjacent lemmas, dorsally rounded, lanceolate, smooth or scaberulous on the nerve, obtuse at the apex; lemmas 2–2.2 mm long, dorsally rounded or keeled only in the upper part, semi-ovate in profile (with straight keel and gibbous margins), membranous with obscure lateral nerves, slightly diverging from the rhachilla, those in opposite rows not imbricate, the rhachilla visible between them, dark green to greyish-green or leaden, smooth or scaberulous on the midnerve and flanks above, obtuse at the apex; palea deciduous soon after the lemma, glabrous on the flanks, the keels slender, wingless, smooth and glabrous; anthers 3, 0.6–1.2 mm long.Caryopsis 0.9–1.1 mm long, oblong.
