Perennial, about 2 ft. high, scantily tufted. Culms erect from a geniculately ascending base, very slender, simple, 5–8-noded, with the lower nodes shortly and the upper long-exserted, smooth and glabrous. Leaf-sheaths tight, terete, quite glabrous, rather thin, prominently striate; ligule a membranous ciliolate rim, up to 1/4 lin. high; blades linear from an equally wide base, long-tapering to a slender point, 2–3 in. by 1–1 1/2 lin., flat, flaccid, spreading, quite glabrous or delicately and very sparingly hairy below, more or less rough on the upper face and margins, midrib very slender, whitish below, lateral primary nerves 2 or 3 on each side, differentiated only below. Panicle at length long-exserted, narrow or more or less effuse, 3–5 in. long, somewhat sparingly and very loosely divided up to the third degree; common axis filiform, striate, smooth, lower internodes 2/3– 4/5 in. long; lower primary branches usually with a long fine branchlet from the base or near it, then bare for 1– 1/2 in., then more closely divided, finely filiform, usually almost smooth, rarely rough; ultimate divisions scanty, capillary, flexuous; pedicels unequal, 1–3 lin. long, with very minute subdiscoid tips. Spikelets elliptic, rotundate in outline, often minutely apiculate, 3/4 lin. long, pale dull green or faintly tinted with brown, pubescent. Glumes thinly membranous, very finely and more or less prominently nerved, equal or subequal and almost as long as the lower floret, minutely apiculate, the lower 3-nerved, the upper 5-nerved, hairs of the latter tubercle-based. Lower floret ♂; valve very like the upper glume, but quite glabrous; valvule slightly shorter with scaberulous keels; anthers 3/8 lin. long. Upper floret hermaphrodite, broad-elliptic in outline, subacute, over 1/2 lin. by almost 3/8 lin.; valve and valvule thinly papery, brownish-white, minutely verrucose all over; anthers slightly smaller than in the ♂ floret.
