Short-lived(?) perennial plants 16–60 cm high, sparsely pubescent at base, hispid to hirsute with stiff tubercle-based hairs or sometimes mostly glabrous on culms and foliage. Culms simple or sparsely branched; nodes bearded. Leaves: sheaths usually more than half as long as culm internodes; blade to 20 cm long, to 3 mm wide, setaceous, with margins scabrous. Panicles open, 3.5–10 cm long, 0.5–5 cm wide. Glumes 5–9 mm long, long-acuminate into a beak which is often bifid into 2 awnlets to 2.5 mm long, 9–11-nerved, glabrous and smooth or (particularly the lower glume) pilose with tubercle-based hairs. Florets slightly shorter than glumes. Lemma 3–5 mm long, awned, cartilaginous, finely 5-nerved, without grooves (but depressed or shortly grooved at base of awn), scabrous on nerves and base of awn, hirsute in lower 3/4 with simple hairs usually exceeding lemma apex; awn 13–30 mm long, flexuose, curved or recurved. Palea long-acuminate into beak 1.5–4 mm long which is notched or bifid into 2 awnlets 0.5–2 mm long, indumentum similar to lemma. Caryopsis 1.8–3 mm long.
Occurs in deep or shallow sandy, sometimes grittyor stony, soils in association with sandstone, laterite or granite; alsorecorded on wallum slopes, hillslopes and ridges, Melaleuca swamps, and seasonal water channels.
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