perennial; culms from a very short rhizome or the tops of slender stolons, fascicled with few intravaginal innovation shoots, erect or geniculately ascending, 2–4 ft. long, glabrous or finely pubescent below the nodes, sometimes hirsute towards the panicle, terete, 3–6-noded, subsimple or scantily branched, upper internodes more or less exserted; leaves glabrous or sparingly (rarely densely) hirsute with tubercle-based hairs; sheaths rather firm, terete or subcompressed, striate, nodes pubescent; ligule a narrow membranous softly ciliate rim; blades linear to lanceolate-linear from a contracted and rounded or gradually attenuate base, long tapering to a very fine point, 1/2–1 1/2 ft. by 4–8 lin. (rarely by 1 in.), flat, smooth except the scabrid margins, midrib rather stout, whitish; panicle erect or nodding, contracted or lax, 3–9 in. long; axis slender, angular, scabrid with fine tubercle-based hairs, often pubescent or subhirsute below the nodes, branches scattered or subopposite or scantily whorled, suberect or spreading, rather distant, up to 4 in. long, simple, laxly racemose with 2-nate spikelets or divided almost from the base, filiform, flexuous or strict, angular, very scabrid, sometimes with scattered hairs; pedicels usually 2-nate, unequal, the terminal sometimes up to 6 in. long, filiform, scabrid, glabrous or with few long hairs; spikelets oblong, obtuse, turgid, 2–2 1/2 lin. long, light green, usually with purple or blackish tips, glabrous; lower glume membranous, obtuse or subacute, 1–1 1/2 lin. long, 5–7-nerved, sometimes purple at the base; upper glume firmly membranous, oblong, 2–2 1/2 lin. long, 7-nerved; lower floret ♂; valve ovate-oblong, obtuse, somewhat shorter than the upper glume; pale oblong, obtuse; anthers 1 1/2 lin. long; hermaphrodite floret exceeding the ♂ and sometimes also the upper glume; narrowly oblong, obscurely and obtusely apiculate, yellowish, smooth, shining; valve coriaceous, 5-nerved; grain obovoid-elliptic, over 1 lin. long; hilum oblong, 1/3 the length of the grain. null
