Perennial, with intravaginal innovations. Culms slender, apparently few-noded, over 1 ft. high, simple, glabrous except at the softly bearded nodes and close to the inflorescence, rough towards the latter and prominently striate, uppermost internode up to 10 in. long, long-exserted. Leaf-sheaths terete, rather tight, closely striate, herbaceous, smooth, or sometimes minutely tuberculate upwards, the basal silky-villous at the base, the remainder ciliate along the margin, shortly bearded at the mouth, otherwise glabrous or nearly so, closely striate; ligule membranous, truncate, up to 3/4 lin. long, ciliolate; blade narrowly linear from an equally wide base, long-tapering to a fine point, up to over 1 ft. long by 1 1/2–2 lin. wide, flat, flexuous, somewhat glaucous, glabrous and smooth underneath, finely pubescent above, margins hardly scaberulous, midrib sharply prominent below, primary lateral nerves (2–3 on each side) very fine, the latter often hardly differentiated from the secondary. Inflorescence a slender straight or curved compact cylindric false spike, 1 1/4–2 in. long by 2–2 1/2 lin. wide (exclusive of the bristles), rather obtuse, pale green or tinged with purple; rhachis very slender, sulcate, villosulous; branches reduced to subsessile involucres supporting a usually solitary spikelet; bristles fine, scaberulous, up to 7–9 to each involucre, very unequal, up to 1 1/2 lin. long, whitish, blunt; pedicels reduced to small stumps with subdiscoid tips. Spikelets elliptic-oblong in back view, obliquely so in profile, very obtuse, 1 lin. long by 1/2 lin. wide, glabrous, very pale green or tinged with purple. Glumes membranous, whitish, sometimes with minute purplish tips; lower rotundate-ovate, acute to subobtuse, 3–5-nerved; upper corresponding in size and outline to the spikelet seen in back view, 5-nerved. Lower floret ♂: valve quite like the upper glume; valvule broadly elliptic, obtuse, almost as long as the valve; anthers about 1/2 lin. long. Upper floret hermaphrodite, almost as long as the lower: valve and valvule transversely and sharply rugose.
