A bushy perennial with a stout woody rootstock, clothed at the base with ovate chartaceous cataphylls. Culms geniculately ascending, sometimes from a prostrate base and rooting at the nodes, up to 4 ft. high, slender to moderately stout, terete, rigid and often woody, 4- to many-noded, glaucous, repeatedly and distantly branched with the branches spreading, scaberulous towards the inflorescence or quite smooth. Leaves glaucous; sheaths shorter than the internodes, rigid and at length coriaceous, terete, glabrous, prominently nerved with the nerves asperulous or scaberulous; ligule reduced to a ciliate rim; blade narrowly linear, subsetaceous or subulate, tapering to a hard callose tip, 1/4–6 in. long, involute or convolute or opening out and up to 2 1/2 lin. wide, rigid, glabrous, closely nerved and very scabrid above, asperulous below. False spike cylindric, moderately dense, erect or nodding, 2–5 in. long, up to 6 1/2 lin. wide (exclusive of the bristles), pallid or slightly tinged with purple; rhachis flexuous, angular, scaberulous, loosely beset with the minute subcupular stumps of the deciduous involucres; involucres with shortly bearded stalks up to 1/2 lin. long; bristles numerous, very slender or subcapillary, of unequal length, free to the base, the inner loosely ciliate below the middle or sometimes glabrous, scaberulous, flexuous, pallid, several up to 5 or 7 lin. long, the remainder shorter. Spikelets usually solitary, sessile within the involucre, lanceolate to narrowly ovate, acute, 3 1/2–4 lin. long, glabrous. Glumes membranous; lower lanceolate to ovate, acute or acutely acuminate, 2 1/4–2 1/2 lin. long, 1–3-nerved with the lateral nerves short; upper elliptic-oblong or oblong, shortly acute or obtuse, mucronate, slightly shorter than the spikelet, 5–7-nerved. Lower floret ♂: valve when flattened ovate-oblong and acute, mucronate, as long as the spikelet, membranous, 5–7-nerved; valvule lanceolate, as long as the valve, keels scaberulous above the middle. Upper floret hermaphrodite, lanceolate, finely acute or acuminate: valve when flattened ovate or elliptic-ovate, aristate-acuminate or mucronate, as long as the spikelet, membranous, 5–7-nerved; valvule lanceolate, as long as the valve. Lodicules 0. Anthers 1 3/4–2 1/4 lin. long, with glabrous tips. Styles free almost to the base.
