Perennial, 1/2–2 ft. high, in small tufts and solitary culms from a very slender rhizome densely covered with the scars of decayed cataphylls and from long slender creeping and rooting runners. Culms erect or geniculately ascending, 1–3-noded, slender, more or less compressed or angular below, glabrous, smooth. Leaf-sheaths compressed, the basal very much so, crowded and flabellate, somewhat thin and pale, all quite glabrous, rarely sparingly hairy, striate and smooth; ligules a narrow membranous rim, minutely ciliolate; blades lanceolate-linear to linear from a frequently more or less rounded base, obtuse or subobtuse, more rarely shortly acute, 2–5 in. by 2–6 lin., folded or flat, bright green, quite glabrous or rigidly ciliate, rarely loosely hairy all over, midrib and primary lateral nerves (up to 5 on each side) very slender, but quite distinct below. Inflorescence of 2–3 or sometimes up to 5 subdigitate sessile erect or spreading spikes; common axis very slender, angular, glabrous, if 3 or more spikes the lowest internode often over 1 in. long. Spikes very slender, 2–4 in. by 1/4 to over 1/2 lin., straight or (if long) flexuous, green, glabrous; rhachis triquetrous, mostly less than 1/2 lin. wide, green with narrow herbaceous margins or wings, angles scaberulous or almost smooth, internodes 3/4– 1/2 lin. long; pedicels solitary, alternately to the right and the left of the frontal angle, reduced to smooth elliptic subsessile discs. Spikelets oblong to lanceolate-oblong, subacute to acute, not rarely acuminate, 1–1 3/4 rarely 2 lin. long, green. Glume corresponding to the size and shape of the spikelet, with very narrowly incurved margins, membranous on the back, more or less papery on the sides, typically 5-nerved, sometimes 4-nerved owing to the obliteration of the middle-nerve, side-nerves approximate towards the margins, 4 lines of very fine appressed hairs (one on each side between the side-nerves and another inside the inner side-nerve), or sometimes the hairs more loose and scanty, or the inner lines of hairs absent. Lower floret reduced to a valve very similar to the glume but usually without a middle-nerve. Upper floret hermaphrodite, much shorter than the spikelet, rarely exceeding 1 lin., elliptic-oblong, obtuse, white: valve and valvule thinly crustaceous, the former very faintly 4-nerved, finely and shortly hairy at the tip. Anthers 1/4 lin. long. Grain elliptic in outline, obtuse, white, about 6/10 lin. by 3/10– 4/10 lin.; scutellum rotundate-elliptic, not reaching to the middle of the grain.
