Wiry stoloniferous perennial mat-grass, with the glaucous or yellowish shoots of numerous bristly distichous leaves densely tufted at the nodes of the wide-spreading stolons; culms 7–35 cm. high, leafy, slender, with bulbous bases. Leaf-blades stiff and pungent, linear, convolute, 0.5–7 cm. long, 1.5–2 mm. wide; sheaths usually imbricate; ligule 0.3–0.75 mm. long. Inflorescence 3.5–12 cm. long, linear, bearing short few-spiculate racemes towards the base appressed to the main rhachis, the racemes reduced to single spikelets borne directly on the rhachis in the upper part, rarely the whole inflorescence reduced to a single spike; racemes up to 4 cm. long, 2–3(–5)-spiculate. Spikelets 4–14-flowered, linear-oblong, pale green, subsessile or on pedicels up to 3 mm. long; glumes 1-nerved, with the nerve 1/2–7/8 as long as the glume, rounded on the back, the lower lanceolate to ovate, 1.2–3 mm. long, acute, the upper narrowly ovate, 2.3–3 mm. long, obtuse to subacute; lemmas with 3 conspicuous dark green nerves, the lateral nerves half as long as the lemma, oblong, 3–3.8 mm. long, obtuse, entire or infrequently minutely emarginate; palea with smooth keels; anthers 1.7–2 mm. long. Grain 1.1–1.2 mm. long, the hyaline pericarp only slightly adherent (removable in a drop of water). Fig. 56.
