Perennial, up to 2 ft. high; innovations extravaginal; cataphylls small, acute, glabrous. Culms fascicled on a short geniculately ascending wiry base, slender, erect, sheathed high up, 7–9-noded, branched below with the branches appressed and often developed as bunches of leaves, terete, glabrous, smooth or slightly rough below the inflorescence. Leaf-sheaths rather tight, glabrous, closely striate, smooth or very slightly rough, the lowest decaying, leaving the internodes at the base bare, the following firmer, long-persistent, up to 5 in. long, straw-coloured, the uppermost subherbaceous; ligule reduced to a short ciliolate rim; blade narrowly linear attenuated towards both ends, with slender subsetaceous tips, up to 1/2 ft. long by 2 lin. wide, subglaucous, flexuous, at length flat, glabrous, rough along the margins, midrib pale, relatively stouter downwards and often occupying the greater part of the base, primary lateral nerves about 2 on each side. Inflorescence paniculate, representing an interrupted false compound spike, narrow, up to over 3 in. long by 5 lin. wide; axis slender, angular, scabrid, glabrous; branches filiform, angular, more or less wavy, irregularly approximate or here and there distant by 4–6 lin., divided from the base, downwards forming rather dense compound spiciform racemes, the lowest up to 8 lin., the intermediate about 5 lin. long, the primary and most secondary racemes terminated by a fine very flexuous loosely scaberulous bristle; bristles of the lower secondary racemes (or clusters) usually up to 4 lin. long, those terminating the primary racemes mostly much shorter; pedicels reduced to short stumps or up to 1/4 lin. long, scaberulous, tips subdiscoid. Spikelets oblong, subacute in back view, more or less oblique and more or less gaping in profile, up to over 1 1/4 lin. long by 1/2– 2/3 lin. wide, pale. Glumes membranous; lower rotundate-ovate, obtuse, sub-5-nerved, half the length of the spikelet; upper broadly ovate, subobtuse, 5–6-nerved, three-fourths to four-fifths the length of the spikelet. Lower floret ♂: valve broadly oblong, subacute, slightly depressed on the back, 7-nerved, with the nerves slightly prominent upwards; valvule oblong, subobtuse, equalling the valve, keels hardly marginate; anthers 3/4 lin. long. Upper floret hermaphrodite, elliptic-oblong, subacute, pale, turning brownish upwards: valve and valvule subcoriaceous, the former faintly transversely rugose.
