Perennial. Culms geniculately ascending from a many-noded branched creeping base, with short leafy barren shoots and 2–3-leaved flowering culms 1–2 ft. long, terete, slender, wiry, glabrous, purplish, the erect portion 1–3-noded with the nodes pilose. Leaves loosely pilose to tomentose, finely tubercled; lower sheaths short, dense, overlapping, the upper long, tight, finely striate and shorter than the internodes; ligule reduced to a white ciliate rim with hairs up to 1/2 lin. long; blade linear to linear-subulate from a rounded or narrowed base, finely acute, 1/2–2 in. long, 1–2 lin. wide, firm, rigid, flat or involute. Panicle 2–4 in. long, 1/4– 1/2 in. wide, linear, dense, erect, deep purple; rhachis and ramifications minutely scaberulous, the former slender, terete, finely striate; branches 2–3-nate, erect; branchlets and pedicels flexuous, capillary, the latter very unequal, 1/4–1 lin. long, with pale slightly thickened glabrous tips. Spikelets linear- or lanceolate-oblong, about 1 lin. long, deep purple, finely grooved and nerved, shortly pilose. Lower glume 1/5 lin. long, ovate, obtuse, nerveless, glabrous; upper oblong when flattened, as long as the spikelet, 2-lobed with the lobes broad, rounded-obtuse, glabrous and one-fifth the length of the glume, with a short mucro from the sinus, membranous, pilose with short soft white appressed hairs, 7-nerved. Lower floret barren: valve narrowly oblong when flattened, equal in length to the upper glume and similar in texture and hairiness, 5-nerved, 2-lobed with the lobes narrow, acute and one-third the length of valve, with an awn 1–3 lin. long from the sinus; valvule 0. Upper floret hermaphrodite: valve elliptic-oblong, 3/4– 7/8 lin. long, hyaline, obscurely 1–3-nerved, minutely 2-fid; valvule of equal length and of similar shape and texture.
