perennial; rhizome short, thick, tomentose, with equally tomentose innovation buds; culms erect or geniculately ascending, simple or often much branched above the base, slender, 1/2–2 ft. long, terete, pubescent above; leaves often crowded, distichously imbricate towards the base; sheaths tight, terete, the lowest tomentose, sometimes glabrescent, the following gradually less hairy, glabrescent or glabrous, except the pubescent or villous margins and nodes; ligule a fringe of short rigid hairs; blades linear to linear-lanceolate with a callous point, 1–4 in. by 1 1/2–2 1/2 lin., rigid, flat or involute, glabrous or hairy, particularly near the base, margins cartilaginous, wavy, spinulous; false spikes 4–10 secund on a filiform angular glabrous or puberulous common axis, erect or spreading, usually longer than the internodes, gradually decreasing upwards, dense, 12–3 lin. long, rhachis filiform, angular, very wavy, rigidly pubescent to subhirsute, pedicels solitary or the lowest 2-nate, filiform with discoid tips, curved, the lower very short, the upper up to 1 lin. long, hairy; spikelets usually 2-ranked, contiguous or subcontiguous, obovoid-ellipsoid, obtuse, turgid, 1 1/4–1 1/2 lin. long, pallid, overtopped by a purplish tuft of silky hairs; lower glume facing the rhachis, subhyaline, broadly ovate to rotundate-ovate, obtuse, 3/4–1 lin. long, often purplish, 3-nerved, hairy; upper glume membranous, broadly-elliptic, acute or subcuspidate, 1 1/4–1 1/2 lin. long, very concave, faintly 5-nerved, minutely villous or glabrescent in the centre, with a dense transverse fringe of purplish hairs below the glabrous tip; lower floret ♂; valve equal and similar to the upper glume, but more distinctly cuspidate, hyaline and glabrous along the middle nerve, transverse fringe broken up into 2 broad tufts; pale broad, almost equalling the valve; anthers over 1 lin. long; hermaphrodite floret elliptic, cuspidate or mucronulate 1–1 1/4 lin. long; valve elliptic, coriaceous, pallid, glabrous or ciliate near the tip, finely pitted. null
