Perennial (?). Culms very lax, up to 3 1/2 ft. long, geniculately ascending, terete, slender, wiry, sparingly to much branched, many-noded, glabrous and smooth. Leaf-sheaths loose and exposing the culm or tight, usually shorter than the internodes, glabrous and smooth; ligule reduced to a very shortly ciliate rim; blade linear from an abruptly contracted base, long and finely acute, 3–5 in. long, 1 1/2–2 1/2 lin. wide, flat, spreading, slightly glaucous, glabrous, smooth except for the scaberulous margins. Panicle linear to ovate, 3 1/2–4 in. long by 3/4–1 in. wide, very lax, flexuous; rhachis terete, flexuous, very slender, glabrous and smooth; branches paired or solitary, sparingly and distantly divided, like the branchlets and pedicels capillary, flexuous, purplish, puberulous; pedicels 1–3 1/2 lin. long, with silvery or purple hairs up to 1 1/2 lin. long from below their discoid paler tips. Spikelets oblong to broadly ovate-oblong, 1 1/2–2 lin. long by about 1 lin. wide, more or less gaping, very pale green or tinged with purple, almost glabrous, awnless. Glumes distant by 1/6 lin.; lower broadly oblong, rotundate, up to 1/2 lin. long, hyaline, faintly 1-nerved, with a ring of minute hairs at the base, rarely with a few hairs on the surface; upper semi-ovate to oblong in profile, slightly to very gibbous in the lower two-thirds and tapering upwards into a very short 2-lobed beak, with the lobes rounded-obtuse and up to 1/5 lin. long, 5-nerved with the nerves prominent below and anastomosing below the apex, thinly coriaceous, pilose from the middle of the keel with purple hairs reaching to the tip of the glume, sparsely and appressedly pubescent on the surface between the raised nerves with minute purple hairs, ciliolate on the margins upwards. Lower floret ♂: valve as long as and similar to the upper glume but much less gibbous and more or less evenly curved on the keel, obscurely nerved, sparsely and obscurely hairy to almost glabrous on the surface, ciliolate on the margins, keel glabrous and smooth; valvule linear, truncate, 1 1/4–1 3/4 lin. long, thinly membranous, keels shortly ciliate from the middle upwards; anthers linear, 1 lin. long, orange-brown. Upper floret hermaphrodite: valve elliptic-ovate when flattened, 1 1/4 lin. long, obtusely and minutely 2-lobed, very thinly chartaceous, faintly 5-nerved, glabrous.
