Perennial. Culms erect or more often geniculately ascending from a woody rootstock, 3/4–2 ft. high, slender, terete or flattened on the side facing a branch, hard and rigid, usually much branched at the base and upwards, many-noded, glabrous and smooth or with the lower internodes pubescent. Leaf-sheaths firm, terete, finely striate, slightly shorter to slightly longer than the internodes, glabrous and smooth or bearded at the mouth, or the lower, which at length break up, silky-hairy at the base; ligule reduced to a ciliate rim; blade linear, tapering to a subacute callose point, involute especially upwards, rarely quite flat, 3/4–6 in. long, 1/2–2 1/2 lin. wide when flattened, glaucous, ascending or obliquely spreading, firm and rigid, glabrous and smooth or with the upper surface pubescent. Panicle linear to oblong or ovate in outline, contracted or loose, 1–4 1/2 in. long, 1/3–1 3/4 in. wide; rhachis slender, flexuous, glabrous or hairy at the nodes; branches semi-verticillate or paired, rarely solitary, once or twice divided, erect or spreading, flexuous, finely filiform, glabrous, the lower distant by 1/2–1 in.; branchlets and pedicels capillary, flexuous, the latter 1/4–2 lin. long, with discoid tips. Spikelets ovate to oblong, 1 1/2–1 3/4 lin. long, pale green or purplish, long and loosely silky-pilose, sometimes from minute tubercles, with white appressed or spreading hairs which exceed the tip by up to 2 lin. Lower glume slightly remote, rotundate, about 1/4 lin. long, thinly membranous, long-pilose with hairs up to 2 1/2 lin. long; upper obliquely linear-lanceolate to lanceolate in profile, ovate and acute to subacute when flattened, usually shortly mucronate, finely 5-nerved, loosely and long-pilose except at the tip, ciliate on the margins. Lower floret ♂, as long as the spikelet: valve similar to the upper glume but slightly wider, obliquely lanceolate to lanceolate-ovate in profile, elliptic-ovate and slightly emarginate or subacute to obtuse when flattened, usually mucronate; valvule lanceolate, as long or nearly as long as the valve, thinly membranous, keels and margins of flaps ciliolate above the middle; anthers 3/4–1 lin. long. Upper floret hermaphrodite, ovate, acute, 1 lin. long.
