Perennial, with a creeping rhizome. Culms erect or geniculately ascending, up to 2 1/2 ft. high, moderately slender, terete, simple, up to 7-noded, glabrous and smooth. Leaf-sheaths slightly shorter or longer than the internodes, keeled upwards, striate, glabrous and smooth; ligule reduced to a densely ciliolate rim; blade linear, as wide as or narrower than the sheath at the base, tapering to a fine acute tip, up to 9 in. or more long and 3 lin. wide, convolute, folded or flat, rigid, glabrous, closely nerved and scaberulous above, smooth below. False spike dense, cylindric, flexuous, plumose, 4 1/2–6 in. long, 2–2 1/2 lin. wide (exclusive of the bristles), purplish; rhachis slender, finely ribbed, scaberulous, loosely studded with the minute stumps of the deciduous involucres; involucres sessile, slightly spreading; bristles up to 20 to each involucre, very slender or subcapillary, scaberulous, of unequal length, free to the base, flexuous, purplish, one stouter than the rest and up to 9 lin. long, the remainder shorter and up to 4 1/2 lin. long. Spikelets solitary, sessile within the involucre, lanceolate or narrowly ovate, acute, about 1 3/4 lin. long, glabrous. Lower glume absent or reduced to a very minute scale; upper oblate or ovate, obtuse or acute, 1/4– 1/2 lin. long, hyaline, nerveless. Lower floret barren and reduced to the valve: valve when flattened lanceolate-oblong or oblong, acute, nearly as long as the spikelet, membranous, 5-nerved; valvule suppressed. Upper floret hermaphrodite, lanceolate-oblong, acute: valve when flattened broadly elliptic-oblong to ovate-oblong, obtuse, mucronulate, as long as the spikelet, membranous, 5-nerved; valvule nearly as long as the valve, thinly membranous. Lodicules minute. Anthers 1 lin. long, with glabrous tips. Styles connate for one-third their length or free nearly to the base.
