Perennial. Culms erect or geniculately ascending from a stout rootstock, tufted, up to 1 1/2 ft. high, slender, terete, rigid, branched especially from about the middle and upwards, many-noded, finely pubescent to glabrous and smooth. Leaf-sheaths finely striate, tight or loosened by the branches, mostly longer than the internodes, sparsely hirsute with stiff spreading hairs from minute tubercles or glabrous and smooth; ligule reduced to a densely ciliate rim; blade linear, tapering to a finely acute callose tip, 1–3 1/2 in. long, 1–2 1/2 lin. wide, flat or becoming involute upwards or entirely involute, usually long-persistent, frequently spreading horizontally and at length reflexed and curling, green or glaucous, glabrous or finely pubescent below. Panicle linear, more or less contracted, 1–4 1/2 in. long, 1/3–1 in. wide, silky-hairy; rhachis slender, flexuous, glabrous and smooth; branches paired or solitary, ascending, finely filiform, up to twice-divided; branchlets and pedicels capillary, flexuous, pubescent at the divisions or glabrous and smooth; pedicels 3/4–3 lin. long, with minutely discoid tips. Spikelets ovate to oblong, 1 1/2–1 3/4 lin. long, silky-pilose with white hairs exceeding the tip by up to 1/2 lin., sometimes finely tuberculate, pale or purplish. Lower glume reduced to a minute thinly membranous nerveless annular rim, densely pilose with hairs up to 1 1/2 lin. long; upper as long as the spikelet, linear-lanceolate to lanceolate-oblong in profile, ovate to ovate-oblong when flattened, acute to obtuse, sometimes mucronate, finely and sometimes very obscurely 5-nerved, evenly and shortly densely pilose, with at first appressed, at length spreading hairs, except at the apex. Lower floret ♂: valve similar to the upper glume but wider, broadly ovate to elliptic-oblong when flattened and obtuse to rotundate-obtuse; valvule linear, as long or almost as long as the valve, usually ciliate on the keels and at the apex. Upper floret hermaphrodite, ovate-oblong, subacute, 3/4– 7/8 lin. long; anthers 7/8–1 lin. long.
