Perennial. Culms erect, up to 5 1/2 ft. high, stout, straight, terete, simple, 2-noded, pruinose, glabrous and smooth. Leaves glabrous; sheaths stout, tight, longer than the internodes, smooth; ligule a ciliate rim; blade linear, tapering to a very fine tip, up to 2 1/2 ft. or more long, 2–3 lin. wide at the base, convolute, rigid, scabrid towards the tip. Panicle narrow, contracted, dense or loose, straight, 1–1 1/4 ft. long, 1–1 1/4 in. wide; rhachis terete and glabrous in the lower part, angular and scaberulous upwards; branches 4–6-nate, erect, sparingly branched or simple, like the branchlets finely filiform to capillary, glabrous, scabrid, the longest up to 4 in. long; pedicels glabrous and smooth, 1/2–1 1/2 lin. long. Spikelets in threes at the ends of the branches and branchlets, lanceolate, pale brown, 3 3/4–4 1/2 lin. long. Glumes firmly chartaceous, 3-nerved; lower oblong-ovate, very obtuse, 2–2 1/2 lin. long, setose near the margins above the middle with 4–8 whitish bristles from large brownish-purple tubercles; upper as long as the spikelet, lanceolate, narrowed into a truncate convolute beak, sparsely setulose about the middle with submarginal rows of bristly hairs from minute brown tubercles, or glabrous. Lower floret ♂: valve lanceolate-oblong, rotundate-obtuse at the apex, slightly shorter than the upper glume, glabrous, 3-nerved, chartaceous; valvule linear, truncate, 2–3 lin. long, membranous, with very narrowly winged ciliolate keels. Upper floret linear-lanceolate: callus emarginate and 2-toothed, about 3/8 lin. long, densely bearded; valve 2–3 lin. long, 2-lobed, with the very acute lobes up to 3/4 lin. long, finely 7-nerved, thinly coriaceous, minutely pubescent towards the tip, the remainder glabrous; awn slender, 3/4–1 1/4 in. long; column minutely pubescent, pale brown, about 3/8 in. long; valvule linear, truncate, 2–2 1/2 lin. long. Anthers 2, 1–1 1/2 lin. long.
