Shrubby perennial plants 60–105 cm high; base thickened, with cataphylls woolly in lower part. Culms strongly branched, woolly; nodes woolly. Leaves mostly glabrous and smooth; sheaths overlapping; blade straight or recurved, to 2.5 cm long, to 1.5 mm wide, with scabrous or tuberculate margins, terminating in a pungent spine, sometimes hispid with tubercle-based hairs. Inflorescence a simple raceme of 1–3 spikelets, sometimes with one or two spikelets reduced to a glume below fertile spikelet(s). Glumes widely divergent at maturity, 3.5–4 mm long, mucronate, 7–9-nerved, smooth, glabrous. Florets exceeding glumes by 1–2.5 mm. Callus bearded. Lemma 5–5.5 mm long, acuminate, muticous or cuspidulate, membranous with hyaline margins, 5-nerved, not grooved, hirsute in lower half with simple spreading hairs, glabrous and smooth or sparsely scaberulous above. Palea entire or bifid, muticous or cuspidulate, indumentum similar to lemma. Caryopsis not seen.
Occurs on conglomerate monoliths (Mt Olga and Mt Currie) on crests,scree slopes, in chasms and crevices, in shallow sand, gravelly slopes or shallowstony red soil, sometimes in seepage from massive boulders.
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