Caespitose perennial with short horizontal rhizome; culms stout, up to 40 cm tall, erect or ascending, branched above, the nodes not exposed (or if so, then glabrous); basal leaf sheaths glossy and glabrous, firmly chartaceous, terete, with sticky elliptic or subcircular sunken glands along the midline, persistent, eventually shedding their lamina; ligule a line of hairs; leaf laminas (2)3.5–9(13) cm × 2.5–5 mm, broadly linear, flat or with involute margins, glabrous or loosely pilose, pale green to glaucous, rather stiff and somewhat pungent, with sticky oblong or elliptic sunken glands along the midline and towards the margins.
Panicle (3)5–7(10) cm long, ovate to elliptic, open, the spikelets evenly distributed on stout pedicels 1–2 mm long, the primary branches not in whorls, terminating in a fertile spikelet, glabrous in the axils, with sticky glands on the main axis, branches and pedicels.
Caryopsis 0.7 mm long, elliptic.