A densely tufted perennial, 1/2–2 ft. high, from a short rhizome; innovations intravaginal. Culms erect, slender, simple, 1-noded, or nodeless except near the base; peduncle exserted, purple, glabrous, bearing sessile elliptic or circular glands towards the panicle, otherwise smooth. Leaf-sheaths overlapping, the lower broad and loose, glandular-tuberculate, loosely to densely pilose or villous with soft spreading hairs, the upper tight, shortly pilose to pubescent; ligule a densely ciliate rim; blade narrowly linear, subsetaceous upwards, 3–10 in. long, tightly involute, or opening out and up to 1 1/2 lin. wide at the base, stiff, flexuous upwards, pubescent to softly pilose or glabrescent, glandular-tuberculate along the margins. Panicle loose and ovate, or somewhat contracted after flowering, 2–5 in. long, up to 2 1/2 in. wide; rhachis and branches glandular like the apex of the culm, the former very slender, capillary upwards; branches mostly paired, at length spreading and nodding, capillary, bare at the base for up to 1 in., loosely trichotomously divided, the lower up to 2 1/2 in. long; pedicels very unequal, 1–10 lin. long. Spikelets 3–5 (mostly 3 1/2–4) lin. long, purple towards the base, pale yellow or whitish above, or pallid throughout. Glumes obliquely and narrowly lanceolate in profile, finely acute, acuminate, thinly scarious, 1-nerved and with 2 very short lateral nerves, often slightly hairy on the sides about the middle when young, more or less scaberulous on the keel. Valves lanceolate-oblong in profile, 1 1/2–2 lin. long (entire part), finely pubescent, finely 9-nerved; lobes acute or obtuse, 1/4– 1/3 lin. long, with a fine bristle 2–3 1/2 lin. long from the inner edge; awn geniculate in the lower third, 4–7 lin. long, with the column twisted and 1 1/2–2 lin. long; callus bearded with hairs about 1/2 lin. long. Valvules linear-oblong, up to 2 lin. long. Anthers 1 1/4 lin. long. Grain about 1 lin. long.
