Perennial with spreading branching rhizomes. Culms stiff, erect or decumbent, 30–70 cm long. Leaf sheaths glabrous or tuberculate-hispid; leaf blades lanceolate, firm, green or glaucous, 3–10 cm × 4–15 mm, glabrous or sparsely hispid, base subcordate, margins serrulate, pectinate-setose near base, apex slenderly acuminate; ligule 0.5–1.5 mm. Racemes 2–6, 3–10 cm, yellowish green, lax, slightly flexuous; rachis internodes slightly shorter to equaling sessile spikelets, margins villous. Sessile spikelet 5–7 mm; lower glume linear-lanceolate, herbaceous, shallowly convex, laterally keeled, margins inflexed, glabrous, 5–7-veined between keels, veins visible along length of glume, keels scabrid to tuberculate in a single row, tubercles spinescent toward apex; upper lemma awned from 0.75–1.3 mm above base, apex subentire or 2-denticulate, teeth (0.1–) 0.5–0.7 mm; awn 7.5–13 mm; palea 0.5–1 mm. Anthers 3, 2.4–3.5 mm. Pedicelled spikelet narrowly lanceolate, 4.5–6 mm, staminate; pedicel villous. Fl. and fr. Jul–Nov.
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