Perennial, up to 10 ft. high, from a short oblique rhizome. Culms erect or rambling (?) among rocks and bushes, many-noded, simple at the base, then copiously branching with the branches more or less bunched, lower internodes more or less compressed or terete, stout, firm, up to 3–4 in. long by up to 2 lin. wide, the following usually much shorter, branching from the nodes, the branches sometimes repeating the habit of the primary culm but more slender to very slender, the upper gradually longer, the uppermost (peduncle) 8–10 in. long, long-exserted, rough upwards and loosely villous close to the inflorescence. Leaf-sheaths terete and tight, bluntly keeled upwards, smooth, the lowest thin or firmer and then more or less persistent, like the following breaking up irregularly or shedding the blades, the upper green and very tight, at length shorter than the internodes, all glabrous and smooth except the finely ciliate margins or sometimes also loosely hairy on the back with very fine and long hairs; ligule a rigidly ciliate rim; blade linear from a slightly constricted base, long-tapering to a very fine point, 2–12 in. long by 1 1/2–3 1/2 lin. wide, hard, flat, rigid, or flexuous, green, quite glabrous or loosely hairy downwards, smooth on the back, rough on the face and particularly on the margins, midrib very slender, prominent below, primary lateral nerves 3–4 on each side, very fine. Inflorescence an erect somewhat flexuous continuous cylindrical or more often lobed false spike and in the latter case subpyramidal to lanceolate in outline, 1–5 1/4 in. long by 2–12 lin. wide (exclusive of the bristles), pale green to brownish or straw-coloured; axis terete, slightly angular, loosely villous; branches either all very short, reduced to sessile clusters of 3–5 spikelets with about as many bristles, or the lower or all except the uppermost elongated, up to 8 lin. long, with a very slender puberulous or loosely villosulous rhachis, terminating with a bristle and bearing from the base small clusters of spikelets supported by as many, or often few, bristles, or here and there and particularly upwards solitary spikelets with a single bristle; bristles slender, scaberulous, pale or darker upwards, the terminal generally much exceeding the others and up to 6 or 8 lin. long; pedicels reduced to short stumps with minutely discoid tips. Spikelets oblong, subacute in back view, very oblique or gibbous in profile, 1–1 1/4 lin. long by less than 1/2 lin. wide in back view, pale. Glumes very unequal, membranous; lower very thin, broadly ovate, acute, from less to more than half the length of the lower floret, tightly appressed to it, 3-nerved; upper as long as the upper floret and covering it closely, 5- to sub-7-nerved, deeply concave. Lower floret barren (? always), equalling the upper: valve similar to the upper glume, but dorsally flattened or depressed; valvule elliptic to lanceolate-elliptic, acute, slightly shorter than the valve. Upper floret hermaphrodite, boat-shaped, widest (in profile) at or close below the middle, subacute, pale: valve and valvule crustaceous, smooth or delicately granular-punctate.
