Perennial; culms decumbent or prostrate-spreading, sometimes clambering in brush, 50 cm. to more than 1.5 m. long, the erect or ascending shoots or branches as much as 55 cm. long, glabrous or sparsely pilose, the nodes not villous; sheaths much shorter than the internodes, glabrous or sparsely or rarely densely pilose or papillose-pilose, especially on the margins; ligule thin, erose or lacerate, about 1 mm. long; blades lanceolate, acuminate, 5-12 cm. long, mostly 5-15 mm. wide, rounded and somewhat clasping at the more or less asymmetric base, thin, scaberulous, finely cross-veined; inflorescences terminal and axillary from the upper sheaths, long-exserted or the axillary ones appressed and partly included, usually not dense, the rather slender racemes ascending, the lower ones as much as 7 cm. long; spikelets 3-3.5 mm. long, glabrous or sparsely pilose or hirsute; first glume acuminate, half to two-thirds as long as the spikelet, scabrous on the keel; second glume and sterile lemma acuminate, subequal or the glume a little longer, the lemma enclosing a palea nearly as long as the lemma and sometimes a staminate flower; fruit 2 mm. long, oblong-elliptic, the scars extending downward into very narrow wings.
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