Perennial from a slender hard rhizome, marked with annuliform rings (the scars of the cataphylls and leaf-bases), innovations extravaginal, covered with firm compressed short cataphylls. Culms erect, up to over 1 ft. high, compressed below, 2-noded, glabrous, smooth. Leaf-sheaths glabrous, apart from the ciliate upper margins and the sometimes silky nodes, the basal compressed, keeled and more or less persistent; ligules very short, membranous, densely ciliate; blades lanceolate-linear, shortly acute or subacute, 1 1/2–1 3/4 ft. long, up to 3 lin. wide, folded or flattened out, apparently somewhat succulent, glabrous, smooth except near the tips, midrib slender, forming a keel below, primary lateral nerves about 4 on each side. Racemes 4, in 2 pairs, each borne on a glabrous smooth peduncle, not quite 1 1/2 lin. long; joints 1 1/2 lin. long, subclavate, slightly curved, somewhat convex on the back and upper part, slightly hollowed out on the face, quite glabrous, minutely granular, 3-nerved apart from the margins; pedicels stoutly clavate, much contracted towards the base, shorter than the joints and subcontiguous with them. Sessile spikelet including the very short callus, 2 lin. long, oblong. Glumes equal; lower coriaceous along the keels, otherwise chartaceous, obtuse, with narrow inflexed margins and distinct acute keels, eciliolate, glabrous, minutely granular, intracarinal nerves few, with some transverse veins above; upper glume boat-shaped, thinly chartaceous to membranous, semiovate in profile, with a minutely scabrid keel and a submarginal nerve on each side. Lower floret 1 1/2 lin. long: valve hyaline, oblong, subobtuse, 2-nerved, eciliolate. Upper floret as long as the lower: valve oblong, minutely 2-dentate, with a microscopic mucro from the notch, 3-nerved, eciliolate; valvule similar, 2-nerved. Pedicelled spikelet similar to the sessile, but both glumes coriaceous, the lower sometimes with an eccentric keel. Upper floret ♂.