Perennial, with spreading scaly rhizomes. Culms solitary or tufted, erect, 1–2 m tall, 4–5 mm in diam., branched or unbranched. Leaf sheaths glabrous to villous, woolly at apex; leaf blades broadly linear, 20–30 × 1.2–1.5 cm, thinly appressed-pilose to densely villous, base rounded, apex long acuminate; ligule ca. 0.3 mm, margin densely ciliate. Panicle dense, narrowly oblong in outline, 10–22 cm; branches 2–5 cm, branchlets many, short, pilose in axils; racemes 2–4-noded with 7–11 spikelets, disarticulating at maturity, one spikelet of a pair sessile, the other pedicellate; internodes and pedicels 2–2.5 mm, slender with expanded tips, densely ciliate. Spikelets 4–5 mm; callus hairs 1.5–2 mm; lower glume narrowly lanceolate, villous with ca. 3 mm hairs, veins smooth, apex subacute or emarginate; upper glume villous on keel, apex acute; lower floret sterile, palea absent; upper lemma 2-lobed to middle; awn 8–10 mm. Anthers 1.8–2.3 mm. Fl. and fr. summer–autumn.