Robust, densely caespitose perennial without rhizomes or stolons; culms stout, up to 200 cm tall, erect, branched, glabrous at the nodes, eglandular; basal leaf sheaths glabrous, thinly chartaceous, terete, eglandular, persistent; ligule a line of hairs; leaf laminas up to 30 cm × 4(5) mm, linear, involute, glabrous or ciliate below, eglandular.Panicle (15)20–30 cm long, narrowly elliptic to narrowly oblong (rarely ovate), open, the spikelets clustered along the distal half of the primary branches on pedicels 1–2.5 mm long, the primary branches not in whorls, terminating in a fertile spikelet, glabrous in the axils, eglandular.Spikelets 5.5–13 × 1.8–2 mm, narrowly oblong to oblong, laterally compressed, 12–25-flowered, the florets disarticulating from below upwards, the rhachilla persistent; glumes unequal, reaching to just beyond the middle of the adjacent lemmas, keeled, lanceolate in profile, glabrous, acute at the apex, the inferior 0.8–1.3 mm long, the superior 1.2–1.6 mm long; lemmas 1.7–2.2 mm long, keeled, narrowly elliptic to narrowly ovate in profile, membranous with distinct lateral nerves, diverging from the rhachilla at c. 45°, those in opposite rows not imbricate and the rhachilla visible between them, dark olive-green, glabrous, subacute at the apex; palea deciduous with the lemma, glabrous on the flanks, the keels slender, wingless, scaberulous; anthers 3, 0.9–1.1 mm long.Caryopsis 0.7–1 mm long, narrowly elliptic to linear.