Perennial. Culms erect or geniculately ascending, loosely tufted, up to 3 1/2 ft. high, very slender and wiry to relatively stout, terete, many-noded, usually branched with the branches erect or spreading, usually more or less glaucous, puberulous to glabrous and smooth. Leaf-sheaths as long as or slightly longer than the internodes, tight or loosened by the branches, glabrous and smooth or the basal silky-pubescent; ligule reduced to a very short densely ciliate rim; blade linear, tapering upwards to a fine subacute callose tip, 1 1/2–7 in. long, up to 1 1/2 lin. wide, flat or more often involute, ascending or spreading, firm, more or less glaucous, glabrous and smooth or finely pubescent. Panicle linear, lanceolate or ovate in outline, contracted and dense to very loose, 3–6 1/2 in. long, 1/2–1 1/2 in. wide, silky-hairy; rhachis slender, flexuous or straight, glabrous or pubescent at the nodes; branches mostly solitary and divided from near the base and, sparingly to abundantly, upwards, ascending or spreading, finely filiform, straight or very flexuous, minutely scaberulous, the lower distant by 1/2–1 in. and in large panicles up to 2 1/2 in. long; branchlets and pedicels capillary, flexuous, glabrous and smooth or asperulous, the latter 1/2–2 lin. long with minutely discoid tips. Spikelets lanceolate-oblong to oblong, mostly 1 1/4–1 1/3 lin. long, loosely pilose, sometimes from minute tubercles, with long silky white hairs which exceed the tip by up to 3 1/2 lin., pale or purplish. Lower glume slightly remote, ranging from a minute annular rim to broadly ovate and obtuse in outline and up to 1/4 lin. long, thinly membranous, nerveless, densely pilose with hairs up to 3 lin. long; upper obliquely linear-lanceolate and finely acute in profile, ovate to ovate-elliptic when flattened, frequently mucronate, finely and obscurely 5–3-nerved, pilose with at first appressed, at length spreading hairs, ciliate on the margins. Lower floret ♂: valve similar to the upper glume but slightly wider, broadly ovate- to elliptic-oblong and acute to acutely acuminate when flattened; valvule almost as long as the valve, lanceolate, thinly membranous, ciliolate on the keels above the middle; anthers nearly 3/4 lin. long. Upper floret hermaphrodite, ovate, acute, 3/4 lin. long. Grain narrowly ovate- or elliptic-oblong, about 1/2 lin. long.
