A densely cæspitose perennial. Culms erect or ascending, 1/2–3 ft. high, surrounded by numerous intravaginal innovations, terete, slender, simple, glabrous and smooth or pubescent at the nodes, 1–4-noded, frequently glaucous below the nodes. Leaves mostly crowded at the base; lower sheaths compressed and sometimes keeled, finely striate, persistent, firm, pilose to tomentose at the base, glabrescent upwards, the upper tight, glabrous and smooth except at the pilose nodes; ligule reduced to a rim of short hairs; blade finely filiform to filiform, setaceously convolute, subrigid or flexuous, 4–12 in. long, rarely flattened and then up to 1 1/2 lin. wide, glabrous to densely pubescent, rarely minutely tuberculate. Panicle linear to oblong, contracted and spike-like, or more or less lax, usually flexuous, 2–5 in. long, 1/2–1 in. wide, silky, white, pink or purplish; rhachis slender, finely striate, scabrid or pubescent in the upper part and at the nodes or all over; branches solitary or paired, filiform, flexuous, loosely divided almost from the base, erect, like the capillary branchlets and pedicels dark and finely pubescent; pedicels 1/2–3 lin. long, usually with several silky white or purple hairs up to 1 1/2 lin. long from below their slightly thickened tips, rarely glabrous. Spikelets oblong, 2–3 lin. long, about 1 lin. wide, usually very densely villous with shining white, pink or purple hairs. Glumes approximate or only distant by up to 1/5 lin.; lower ovate or oblong, acute or obtuse, 1/4– 1/2 lin. long, hyaline, nerveless or 1-nerved, hidden by hairs three to four times as long as the glume; upper lanceolate- to ovate-oblong in profile, slightly gibbous in the lower two-thirds, minutely emarginate or shortly 2-lobed, with a mucro or short awn up to 1 1/2 lin. long from the sinus, firmly chartaceous, finely 5-nerved, densely villous with the hairs increasing in length from the base to beyond the middle, then glabrous towards the apex except for the densely ciliate margins, rarely shortly pilose below, hairs at first appressed, spreading at maturity and exceeding the spikelet by 1–2 lin. Lower floret ♂: valve as long as and very similar to the upper glume, with an awn up to 3 lin. long; valvule linear, 2-fid, nearly as long as the valve, membranous, margins ciliate; anthers 3/4 lin. long. Upper floret hermaphrodite: valve elliptic to elliptic-oblong when flattened, emarginate, up to 1 1/4–1 1/2 lin. long, thinly chartaceous, faintly 5-nerved.
