Perennial. Culms erect or geniculately ascending, up to 4 ft. high, slender to moderately stout, simple, 4–7-noded, with the lower internodes short and the upper much-elongated, glabrous and smooth. Lowest leaf-sheaths thin, loosely pilose or glabrous, longer than the internodes, the remainder glabrous, smooth, striate, the upper at length shorter than the internodes; ligule truncate, 1–1 1/2 lin. long, lacerate; blade linear, acute, up to 1 ft. or more long, 1 1/2–5 lin. wide, flat, firm, green, sparsely hairy above or quite glabrous, more or less scaberulous, or smooth. Panicle narrow, 7–14 in. long, 1/2–1 in. wide, loose, straight or flexuous; rhachis slender, smooth below, scaberulous above; branches paired, erect, distant, filiform, loosely spiculate, scaberulous, the lower up to 4 in. long; lateral pedicels 3/4–1 lin. long, the terminal much longer. Spikelets narrowly oblong, appressed to the branches, 7–9 lin. long, green. Glumes acute, herbaceous, with hyaline margins, smooth, or scaberulous on the nerves; lower broadly lanceolate to ovate or ovate-elliptic, 1 3/4–2 1/2 lin. long, 1–3-nerved; upper broadly lanceolate-oblong to elliptic, 2 1/2–4 lin. long, 3–5-nerved. Florets 3–4, loose, the uppermost reduced; rhachilla-internodes 1 1/2–1 3/4 lin. long, hairy above the middle with hairs 1/2– 3/4 lin. long; callus obtuse, up to 1/2 lin. long, densely bearded with hairs up to 1/2 lin. long. Valves long-exserted, oblong-lanceolate and acute in profile, the lower 3 1/2–4 1/2 lin. long, distinctly 7–9-nerved, with the nerves finely scaberulous towards the tip, firmly herbaceous, glabrous, minutely granular downwards, shortly 2-fid, with the lobes lanceolate and acute or each produced into a fine bristle up to 1 lin. long; awn geniculate, from the upper third of the valve, up to 8 lin. long; column pale brown, usually loosely twisted, 1 1/4–2 lin. long; bristle very fine. Valvules oblong-linear, 3 1/2–3 3/4 lin. long, rigidly ciliolate on the keels. Anthers 1 lin. long. Ovary densely hairy above the middle.
