Perennial, with a slender naked erect rhizome. Culms erect, about 2 ft. high, slender, terete, sparingly branched and up to 8-noded below the middle, glabrous and smooth; uppermost internode (peduncle) up to 11 in. long. Leaf-sheaths terete, glabrous except for a few hairs at the mouth, smooth, the lower longer, the upper shorter than the internodes; ligule reduced to a ciliate rim; blade linear, acute, up to 5 in. long and 2 lin. wide when opened out, convolute, erect, rather rigid, glabrous, closely nerved and asperulous on the upper surface, smooth below. False spike cylindric, moderately loose, erect, 4 in. long by 2 1/2 lin. wide (exclusive of the bristles), variegated with pale green and purple; rhachis finely ribbed, scaberulous, loosely beset with the minute puberulous-tipped stumps of the deciduous involucres; involucres sessile, slightly spreading; bristles about 15 to each involucre, very slender, flexuous, free to the base, scaberulous, of unequal length, one stouter than the others and up to 5 1/2 lin. long, the rest much shorter. Spikelets solitary, sessile within the involucre, lanceolate and acutely acuminate in back view, usually gaping, 1 3/4 lin. long, glabrous. Glumes ovate, thinly membranous; lower obtuse, about 1/3 lin. long, nerveless; upper acute, 2/3 lin. long, nerveless or 1-nerved. Lower floret barren and reduced to the valve: valve when flattened ovate or ovate-oblong and acute, slightly shorter than the spikelet, membranous, 5-nerved; valvule suppressed. Upper floret hermaphrodite: valve similar to that of the lower floret but slightly wider and as long as the spikelet; valvule narrowly ovate, truncate, slightly shorter than the valve. Lodicules minute. Styles connate.
