perennial; rhizome short, præmorse, oblique; culms erect, 2 1/2–3 1/2 ft. long, compressed below, villous close to the panicle, otherwise smooth and glabrous, 2–4-noded, internodes usually long exserted, except the lowest; sheaths tight, striate, glabrous except on the ciliate margins and very finely silky nodes, lower compressed, keeled, pallid or purplish, firm, persistent, fugaciously hairy at the base, 2–6 in. long; ligule a very densely and long ciliate rim; blades narrow, linear, tapering to a very long, fine point, over 1 ft. by 1 1/4–2 lin. (unfolded), usually folded or involute above, flexuous, glaucous, glabrous, margins cartilaginous, scabrid; panicle spike-like, cylindric, dense 1 1/2–3 in. by 3–4 lin.; axis subvillous; branches reduced to subsessile clusters of 2–3 spikelets or to a single spikelet, each spikelet subtended by a fascicle of 3–4 or, if solitary, by 6–8 slender subflexuous bristles, 4–6 lin. long, purple from the middle, scabrid all along; pedicels very short, tips discoid; spikelets obliquely ovoid, 1 1/4–1 1/2 lin. long, whitish, glabrous; glumes firmly membranous, lower ovate, acute, about half as long as the spikelet, 5-nerved, upper oblong, very concave, subapiculate, shorter than the spikelet by 1/4, 7-nerved; lower floret ♂; valve equalling or slightly exceeding the upper floret, oblong, 5-nerved, subapiculate; pale equal to the valve; hermaphrodite floret elliptic-oblong, slightly beaked, 1 1/2 lin. long; valve very convex, 5-nerved, very finely honey-combed, pallid, sometimes with a dark spot near the tip; anthers almost 1 lin. long. null
