Plants forming loose or compact hummocks, c. 1 m high, 1–4 m wide, stoloniferous. Flowering culms 0.6–2 m high. Leaves: sheath glabrous or woolly-hairy, glaucous or purplish; orifice pubescent or with woolly or stiff hairs to 7 mm long; blade straight or flexuose, folded, 8–20 cm long, 1.2–1.8 mm wide; pseudopetiole very short (about 3 mm long), scaberulous, hirsute or woolly. Panicles continuous, 10–41 cm long, 0.7–1.5 (–2) cm wide; branches flattened, 2–4 (–8) cm long. Spikelets overlapping in 2 regular rows, secundly arranged, shortly pedicellate, 4–12 mm long, 2–5 mm wide, loosely 3–10-flowered. Glumes unequal (lower glume 2–3.5 mm long, upper 3–5 mm long), linear-lanceolate, acuminate or asymmetrically obtuse, entire, pungent-pointed, strongly carinate. Callus broadly obtuse, glabrous. Basal lemma lanceolate or elliptic, 2.5–4 mm long, indurated or scarious, 3-nerved, glabrous or sparsely hairy near base; lobes ±0.5 mm long, with midlobe narrower than laterals. Palea ±equal to lemma body, emarginate, sometimes bimucronate, prominently 2-keeled, pubescent; keels not winged; flaps almost as wide as body. Anthers 1.5–2 mm long.
Found onriver banks, in stony watercourses, on margins of salt lakes and samphire marshes,coastal shell mounds, beach sands, calcareous drainage floors, cracking clayplains and flats. Grows in sandy and sandy loam (often red) soils and inassociation with limestone, quartzite and sandstone.
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