Perennial, to over 3 ft. high, often apparently tall. Culms erect or ascending from a decumbent rooting base, simple or more often sparingly branched, stout, terete, glabrous, 5- to many-noded, sheathed all along or some of the upper nodes shortly exserted. Leaves more or less glaucous; sheaths tight, firm, glabrous except at the silkily pubescent or villous nodes or softly ciliate upwards with a delicately pubescent or villous transverse zone at the junction with the blade or loosely and softly hairy all along, with the hairs tubercle-based and deciduous; ligule reduced to a fine ciliate rim; blades linear-lanceolate from a rounded contracted base, long-tapering to a fine point, 3–8 in. by 3–7 lin., firm, somewhat succulent, glabrous, smooth except along the scaberulous margins, midrib of large leaves slightly prominent below and whitish above towards the base, otherwise very fine or indistinct like the lateral nerves. Panicle oblong to ovate-oblong, 3–6 in. long, contracted or opened out by the spreading of the lower branches and then up to 4 in. wide, divided to the third or sometimes the fourth degree, glabrous except the silkily pubescent or villosulous motile bases of the primary branches and some long fine hairs on the pedicels; primary axis slender, angular, scaberulous upwards; primary branches irregularly scattered or approximate in pairs, suberect or more or less spreading, the lowest up to 3–4 in. long, filiform, scaberulous, divided from low down or from the very base, the branchlets more or less secund, representing short dense downwards sometimes compound racemes; pedicels with discoid tips and usually with 1–3 fine long hairs below them, the lateral very short, the longer up to 1 lin. long. Spikelets rather crowded, ovate-oblong, acute to subacuminate, 1 1/2 lin. long, glabrous, glaucous or sometimes tinged with purple. Glumes very different; lower minute, truncate or apiculate, hyaline, white or purple; upper membranous, oblong, acute to subacuminate, faintly 5-nerved, the tips or the back often purple. Lower floret usually ♂; valve very similar to the upper glume and of equal size; valvule as long as the valve, oblong; anthers 1/2 lin. long. Upper floret hermaphrodite, oblong, obtuse or minutely apiculate, 1/2 lin. long, dull, whitish, very finely pitted; valve and valvule thinly crustaceous.
