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Caespitose mat-forming perennial with short branching rhizomes; culms up to 35 cm tall, erect or ascending, wiry, unbranched, glabrous at the nodes, eglandular; basal leaf sheaths woolly-tomentose, chartaceous, terete, eglandular, persistent; ligule a line of hairs; leaf laminas 0.4–0.6 cm × 1–3 mm, linear to broadly linear, flat or folded, asperulous above, glabrous beneath, rather stiff, glaucous, eglandular.Panicle 4–6.5 cm long, oblong to elliptic or ovate, loose or dense, the spikelets densely clustered on short secondary branchlets and with short stout pedicels c. 0.5 mm long, the primary branches usually ascending, sometimes appressed to the main axis, rarely spreading, not in whorls, terminating in a fertile spikelet, glabrous in the axils, eglandular.Spikelets 3.5–5.5 × (2)2.5–3(3.5) mm, ovate to oblong-ovate, strongly laterally compressed, 5–12(22)-flowered, the florets disarticulating from the apex downwards, the rhachilla fragile; glumes subequal, 1.4–1.9(2.2) mm long, reaching to just beyond the middle of the adjacent lemmas, keeled, lanceolate in profile, scaberulous on the keel, acute at the apex; lemmas 1.7–2.2 mm long, ovate to oblong-elliptic in profile, thinly membranous with hyaline margins and distinct lateral nerves, diverging from the rhachilla at c. 45°, those in opposite rows not imbricate, the rhachilla visible between them, pale green and often tinged with purple, scaberulous on the keel, broadly truncate and slightly retuse at the apex; palea glabrous on the flanks, the keels slender, wingless, scaberulous above; anthers 3, 0.8–1 mm long.Caryopsis c. 0.9 mm long, elliptic to oblong-elliptic.