perennial, glabrous; culms fascicled from a short præmorse rhizome, erect, 2–4 ft. high, 3-noded, smooth, internodes enclosed or more or less exserted; lowest sheaths much reduced, firm, scale-like, the following very tight, long, the uppermost sometimes tumid, slightly rough, striate; ligules obtuse, erose, up to 2 lin. long; blades linear from a broad or slightly narrowed base, tapering to a very long fine point, up to 1 1/2 ft. by 3–5 lin., flat, rather firm, smooth below, slightly rough above, closely and very finely many-nerved; panicle erect or slightly nodding, oblong, contracted, rarely open and pyramidal, 1/2–1 ft. long; branches fascicled or 3–2-nate, very unequal, the longest 1/4– 1/2 ft. long, undivided to 1/3 of their length or more, filiform, smooth; pedicels scabrid, the lateral shorter than the spikelets, the latter light green, 2 1/2–3 1/2 lin. long; glumes subequal, 3-nerved, subhyaline above, glabrous, the lower lanceolate, acuminate, the upper lanceolate-oblong, acute or subacuminate; valve oblong-cylindric, convolute, obscurely bilobed, 2–2 1/2 lin. long, shortly hairy all over, 5-nerved; callus minute, obtuse, minutely hairy; awn not disarticulating, 5–6 lin. long, scabrid, slightly twisted below, bent 1–2 lin. above the base; pale almost as long as the valve, obtuse, hairy on the back; lodicules 3, oblong, obtuse, the posterior smaller; anthers 1 1/2 lin. long, naked; grain oblong, cylindric, 1 1/2 lin. long. null
