Compactly tufted or tussock-forming perennials, viscid, aromatic, glandular on most parts; rootbase bulbous or knotty, hirsute. Culms erect, 17–50 cm high, wiry, branched, scabrid with prickly tubercles, usually glandular below nodes. Leaves leathery, densely hispid or hirsute, prickly tuberculate, glandular with pustular often crateriform glands; sheaths usually overlapping; ligule 0.5–1 mm long; blade flat becoming involute, to 2 (–8) cm long, rigid, pungent. Panicles loose to open, usually 8–15 cm long and 4–8 cm wide, exuding resin just below axils and spikelets, with glandular and prickly-scabrid tubercles; axils with prominent pulvini; branches spikelet-bearing usually from near axil. Spikelets pedicellate, linear-oblong, 4–30 mm long, 2–3.3 mm wide; rachilla flexuose, thickened; florets 9–66, closely overlapping. Glumes ±equal, ovate, 0.8–1.8 mm long, thickly keeled, sometimes prickly-tuberculate near apex. Lemma broadly ovate, 1.8–2 mm long, obtuse or truncate, membranous to cartilaginous with hyaline margins, 3-nerved, scabrous or prickly-tuberculate in upper part; lateral nerves sometimes closer to midnerve, thickened. Palea prickly-or spiny-tuberculate; body obovate to orbicular; keels thickened, curved, protruding beyond margins of lemma; flaps distinctly narrower than body. Stamens (2–) 3; anthers 0.6–1 mm long. Grain not compressed, ovoid or ellipsoid, 0.6–0.8 mm long, somewhat shiny, with minute stipe.
Found in skeletal sandstone, quartzite and laterite soils on ridges,outcrops, mesas, slopes, and crevices, and in rocky gorges.
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