Culms 30–100 cm high, densely tufted, unbranched; nodes with silky appressed hairs. Leaves: ligule c. 1 mm long; blade 7–30 cm long, 2–5 mm wide. Inflorescence subdigitate or digitate; racemes 2–4 (although branches often pressed together and appear as one spike-like axis), 3.5–7 cm long (excluding awns), without involucre of basal spikelets or rarely 2 present; raceme internodes c. 3 mm long, longer than pedicels (long hairs on margin), pedicels c. 2 mm long. Spikelet pairs of one sessile spikelet and one pedicellate spikelet, the pedicellate spikelet largely obscured by the lower glume of the sessile spikelet except for the developed awn. Sessile spikelets narrowly elliptic or obovate-oblong; lower glume as per spikelet shape, flat or slightly rounded on back, 6–12 mm long, 1.8–2.2 mm wide, broadly truncate and often irregularly toothed, 7-veined, glabrous or ciliate, coriaceous; upper glume ovate-lanceolate, longer than lower glume and seen as an emergent tip past the truncated apex of the lower glume, margins incurved and apex tapered into a fine point, 3-veined, glabrous, sometimes ciliate towards tip, chartaceous; florets 2, male; lower lemma oblong or ovate-lanceolate, 6–11 mm long; lower palea 4.5–11 mm long; upper lemma linear, sometimes with a short awn to 2.5 mm long and palea similar in length to lower lemma and palea. Pedicellate spikelets linear-lanceolate; lower glume shape as per spikelet, rounded on back (especially when caryopsis mature), 5–7 mm long, obtuse to truncate, 5-veined, variously pilose on surface, margins and apex, stiffly coriaceous; upper glume narrowly lanceolate, ⅔ as long as lower, glabrescent, stiffly coriaceous; one bisexual floret, lower absent; upper lemma a strap-like column, c. 2 mm long, with awn 25–53 mm long; upper palea c. 3.5 mm long; base of pedicellate spikelet forming a bearded callus at maturity, c. 0.5–1 mm long, with long hairs.
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