Perennial. Culms erect, about 3 ft. high, slender, terete, simple, 2-noded, hairy towards the base or glabrous and smooth; upper internodes long-exserted. Leaf-sheaths more or less hispid with tubercle-based hairs, bearded at the nodes, the lower densely villous or woolly at the base, at length splitting into fibres and coating the base of the culm; ligule a ciliolate rim; blade linear, finely acute, 7 in. or more long, 2 1/2 lin. wide, flat, hairy like the sheaths. Panicle ovate, loose, 9 in. long, 3 in. wide; rhachis smooth below, minutely scaberulous upwards; branches clustered, finely filiform, scaberulous, loosely divided, the lower up to 3 1/2 in. long; pedicles unequal, up to 3 lin. long. Spikelets linear-lanceolate and acuminate to linear-oblong, 3 1/2–4 lin. long, reddish-brown. Glumes chartaceous, 3-nerved, glabrous; lower oblong-ovate, truncate or very obtuse, 1 1/2–1 3/4 lin. long; upper linear-lanceolate, truncate, as long as the spikelet. Lower floret ♂: valve lanceolate, acuminate, obtuse at the tip, up to 3 3/4 lin. long, otherwise similar to the upper glume; valvule linear, truncate, 2 1/2 lin. long, with the keels minutely ciliolate above the middle. Upper floret linear: callus truncate or slightly emarginate, 1/4 lin. long, densely bearded; valve 1 3/4–2 lin. long, minutely and acutely 2-lobed, thinly coriaceous, finely 7-nerved, minutely pubescent; awn 1–1 1/4 in. long; column brown, up to 4 lin. long, minutely pubescent; valvule narrowly linear, 2 1/4 lin. long. Anthers 2, 3/4 lin. long.
