Perennial, from a very slender early disintegrating rhizome, 1 to several ft. high. Culms very slender, weak, geniculately ascending from an often decumbent base, branched below, the upright parts 4–7-noded, terete, quite glabrous and smooth, internodes mostly exserted. Leaf-sheaths rather tight, the lowest at length drying and breaking up, all quite glabrous and smooth or finely ciliolate along the outer margin, striate; ligule reduced to a very obscure minutely ciliolate rim; blades lanceolate-linear to linear from a shortly constricted base, tapering to an acute point, 2 to over 3 in. by 2–3 1/2 lin., flat, thin, glabrous and smooth except along the finely scaberulous margins; midrib very fine, somewhat prominent below, primary lateral nerves 2–3 on each side, faint. Panicle erect, at length mostly long-exserted, ovate to ovate-oblong in outline when open, 1 1/2–4 1/2 in. long, divided to the third or sometimes fourth degree; common axis slender, striate to subangular, like all its divisions more or less wavy, terete and smooth, lowest internodes from over 1– 1/2 in. long, the upper relatively numerous and short; primary branches solitary, rarely approximate in pairs, subcapillary to capillary, divided from the base, the lowest up to half the length of the panicle, often spreading at angles of 50°–90°; secondary branchlets forming more or less secund simple or downwards compound loose racemes of 2–7 spikelets; pedicels 1/2–1 lin. long, with minutely but distinctly discoid tips. Spikelets very obliquely oblong, gibbous and soon gaping, up to over 1 1/4 lin. long, green, glabrous and smooth. Glumes very dissimilar; lower reduced to a minute ovate faintly 3–1-nerved thin scale; upper obliquely ovate-lanceolate and acute in profile, ovate in dorsal view, conspicuously gibbous below, as long as the spikelet, herbaceous-membranous, prominently 9–11-nerved. Lower floret ♂: valve sublinear in profile, oblong in dorsal view, as long as the upper glume and of the same substance, but 5-nerved; valvule linear, hyaline, 2-nerved, shorter than the valve, with very narrow flaps. Upper floret hermaphrodite, elliptic-oblong in outline, obtuse, dorsally convex (the curvature much broader than high), up to 3/4 lin. long, pale honey-coloured, polished; valve and valvule thinly crustaceous, the former very narrowly involute, obscurely 5-nerved, the latter with narrow downwards widening flaps; anthers 1/3 lin. long. Grain broad-elliptic, almost plano-convex, 2/5 lin. by 1/5 lin.; embryo not quite half the length of the grain; hilum small, punctiform.
