perennial, quite glabrous; culms ascending from a prostrate, rooting base, 1 1/2–2 ft. long, compressed below, terete in the upper part, glabrous, many-noded, scantily branched; sheaths somewhat loose, striate, smooth, the lower withering; ligule a dense fringe of hairs; blades linear, acute, 2 1/2–4 in. by 1 1/2–2 lin., usually more or less convolute, rigid, green, smooth except the scabrid margins; false spikes 2–4, distant on a triquetrous smooth axis up to 3 in. long, secund, 2-ranked, 1–1 1/2 in. long; rhachis linear, 1/3– 1/2 lin. broad, flat on the back, with a very prominent wavy midrib in front, smooth; pedicels solitary, very short, stout, tips subdiscoid, with 1–2 spreading hairs; spikelets contiguous, oblong, subacute, 1 1/2–1 3/4 lin. long, green or tinged with purple; lower glume facing the rhachis, thinly membranous, elliptic to rotundate-ovate, obtuse, 1/2– 3/4 lin. long, sub-7-nerved; upper glume membranous, oblong, conspicuously 7–9-nerved, nerves green; lower floret ♂; valve like the upper glume, but narrower, 7-nerved; pale equal, obtuse; anthers over 1 lin. long; hermaphrodite floret broadly elliptic, obtuse, 1 1/4–1 1/2 lin. long; valve 7-nerved, transversely wrinkled. null
