Base unknown.Culms over 2 3/4 ft. high, terete, relatively stout, branched, up to 6- or more-noded. Leaf-sheaths loose, longer than the internodes, finely striate, more or less shortly pilose or the upper glabrous; ligule reduced to a densely ciliate rim of short hairs; blade linear, long-tapering to a fine acute point, up to 5 in. long and 5 1/2 lin. wide, flat, sparsely pubescent, scaberulous above and on the margins. Panicle lax, up to 6 in. long by 3/4–1 in. wide; rhachis finely filiform, flexuous, glabrous; branches ascending, subcapillary, flexuous; branchlets and pedicels capillary and flexuous, the latter 1–2 1/2 lin. long, with several glistening white hairs up to 1 lin. long from below their minutely discoid tips. Spikelets oblong, 2–2 1/4 lin. long by 3/4 lin. wide, pale, villous with long silky appressed white hairs which exceed the apex by up to 2 lin. Glumes approximate; lower linear-oblong, emarginate, up to 3/4 lin. long, thinly membranous, nerveless, hidden by a dense basal tuft of hairs up to 2 lin. long, the remainder glabrous; upper as long as the spikelet, lanceolate in profile, very slightly gibbous in the lower two-thirds and tapering upwards into an acutely two-lobed beak, with an erect awn up to 2 1/2 lin. long from the sinus, very thinly coriaceous except for the membranous lobes, finely 7-nerved, long and silkily villous, ciliate on the margins. Lower floret ♂: valve very similar to the upper glume but slightly narrower, 5-nerved and with an awn up to 5 1/2 lin. long; valvule linear, nearly as long as the valve, with scaberulous keels; anthers 3/4 lin. long. Upper floret hermaphrodite: valve elliptic-oblong and emarginate when flattened, nearly 1 1/2 lin. long, very obscurely 5-nerved, thinly chartaceous, glabrous except for the ciliolate apex.
