Perennial; rhizome creeping, wiry, sending up a small tuft of culms and intravaginal innovation-shoots. Culms up to 3 ft. high, somewhat compressed below, slender, 2-noded, smooth, glabrous. Leaf-sheaths firm, tight, glabrous (also at the nodes), smooth, striate, the lowest long-persistent, fuscous or lead-grey; ligules short, firmly scarious, pubescent; blades very narrow, junciform, laterally compressed, narrowly and shallowly channelled towards the base, ending in a short point, up to 5 in. by 3/4 lin., glabrous, smooth except at the slightly rough tips, striate. Panicle very narrow, erect, up to 4 in. long; rhachis and branches smooth and glabrous; branches paired and unequal or the upper solitary, simple, bearing a single raceme, or the longest which may be almost up to over 1 in. long with a small lateral raceme, their tips discoid. Racemes 3–1-noded; joints and pedicels alike, finely filiform, ciliate, cilia white, up to over 1 lin. long; joints up to 2 1/2 lin. long; pedicels about 2 lin. long. Spikelets narrowly lanceolate, subacute, 3 lin. long, pale brown. Glumes equal, chartaceous, very minutely truncate, glabrous except for the long-bearded callus, lower finely 9-nerved, upper 5-nerved. Valve of lower floret linear-oblong, almost 2 1/2 lin. long, 2-nerved, ciliate above the middle, of upper floret oblong, 1 3/4 lin. long, lobes adnate to the awn, ciliate; awn bristle-like, about 3 lin. long. Lodicules minute, glabrous.
