Plants usually with long, scaly rhizomes. Culms erect, 70–90 cm tall, rigid, puberulent below nodes. Leaf sheaths loose, glabrous, usually shorter than internodes; leaf blades 4–14 × 0.4–1 cm, flat, scabrid on both surfaces and margins, apex acuminate; ligule ca. 1 mm, glabrous or ciliate. Panicle 8–27 cm, rather open, sometimes nodding; branches few to many at each node, branches and pedicels all slender, scabrid. Spikelets lanceolate, 2–3 mm, gray-green or purplish; glumes 0.5–1.2 mm with lower glume slightly shorter than the upper, hyaline, veinless or upper glume 1-veined, apex obtuse; lemma 2–3 mm, gray-green or purple, scaberulous, lower 1/4 of back pilose; awn 8–16 mm. Anthers ca. 0.8 mm. Fl. and fr. Jul–Oct. 2n = 40, 42.