Perennial plants 30–80 cm high, sometimes pruinose or glaucous; base slightly thickened, pubescent. Culms simple or sparsely branched, mostly glabrous; nodes bearded with tubercle-based hairs or partly bearded and densely tuberculate. Leaves: sheaths shorter (sometimes longer) than culm internodes; blade 10–30 cm long, 2.5–7 mm wide, scabrous or smooth on upper surface, pilose or hispid with tubercle-based hairs on lower surface, with margins scabrid, often purplish red. Panicles usually contracted and compact to dense, rarely somewhat loose, 4.5–13 cm long, 1–4 cm wide. Axillary panicles sometimes present, with spikelets 2.5 mm long. Glumes 5.5–8.5 (–10) mm long, muticous or with 1–2 (–4) mm long awnlet, 9–11-nerved, hirsute with tubercle-based hairs or sometimes only pilose near margins. Florets subequal to glumes; lemma and palea appressed or slightly divergent. Lemma 6–7 mm long, awned, cartilaginous in lower part and membranous above, 7-nerved, bisulcate towards apex, hirsute in lower 1/2–2/3 with hairs not exceeding apex, glabrous and smooth or scaberulous above; awn 10–35 mm long, twisted or curved or recurved. Palea 6–8.5 mm long, acuminate into beak c. 1 mm long, entire or bifid into 2 awnlets to 0.5 mm long. Caryopsis 2.5–4 mm long.
Occurs in deep or shallow, sandyor heavytextured soils, salt flats, outcrops or hillslopes of granite and sandstone,and seasonally wet alluvial sites such as floodouts, drainage channels,waterways and seepage.
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