Compactly tufted perennials, with culms and leaves scabrid-papillose-tuberculate; rootbase bulbous, woolly or hirsute, sometimes rhizomatous. Culms erect, 30–60 cm high, wiry, often pilose or hirsute. Leaves usually pilose; ligule a fringe of hairs, 0.7–1 mm long; blade tightly rolled, filiform, stiff, to 5 (–10) cm long, firmly pointed. Panicles dense to open, sometimes an unbranched spike, 12–18 cm long, 1–8 cm wide, densely scabrous; branches stiff, spreading to deflexed, usually simple, entirely spikelet-bearing. Spikelets sessile, linear or lanceolate, 4–25 mm long, 0.8–2 mm wide, often strongly curved; rachilla flexuose, ultimately brittle and breaking up, but not jointed; florets 9–56, closely overlapping, falling entire. Glumes usually ±equal, ovate, 0.8–1.2 mm long, firmly membranous. Lemma ovate, 1–1.5 mm long, obtuse, firmly membranous; margins hyaline near apex. Palea as long as lemma or longer, hyaline; body spathulate, apically ciliolate; keels short and incising apex into 3 teeth, partially minutely scaberulous; flaps almost as wide as body. Stamens 2; anthers 0.6–0.8 mm long. Grain dorsally compressed, ovoid or oblong, plano-convex in profile, 0.5–0.8 mm long.
Commonly associated with limestone; in clayey swales of sandhills, deep redsands and loams, on skeletal hillslopes; in low-lying seasonally wet habitats.
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