Plants forming rounded hummocks to 0.5 m high. Flowering culms 0.3–1 m high, woolly near nodes. Leaves: sheath purple-striate when young, woolly or with ciliate upper margins; orifice and collar woolly or pubescent; blade straight, (1.5–) 9–21 cm long, 0.8–1 mm wide; pseudopetiole c. 3.5 mm long, glabrous or woolly. Panicles spiciform, dense, (3.5–) 6–13 cm long, 1–3 cm wide, with branches 4–13 cm long, rarely a raceme; axis and divisions subterete or compressed. Spikelets cuneate or oblong or lanceolate or elliptic, 7–19 (–25) mm long (including lobes and awnlets), 5–6 (–15) mm wide, loosely 4–10-flowered; pedicel 2.5–20 mm long; rachilla internodes 1–1.8 mm long, terete. Glumes ovate or elliptic, 6–11 (–14) mm long, entire and acuminate to obtuse, or asymmetrically emarginate, scarious, many-nerved (often asymmetrically so), usually purpletinged; margins usually ciliate; upper glume sometimes minutely 2-lobed near apex. Callus acute or acuminate. Basal lemma 7–14 mm long, abruptly bitextured; body 3–4 mm long, indurated, longhirsute to partly ciliate, glossy, yellowish; lobes scarious, usually partly pubescent, purple-tipped; midlobe 4–10 mm long, narrower than lateral lobes, long-acuminate to aristulate; lateral lobes lanceolate to ovate or oblong, 3–7 mm long. Palea 1–2 mm longer than lemma body, emarginate or minutely 2-lobed; body abruptly bitextured (indurated below, hyaline above), glossy; keels strongly curved, sometimes narrowly winged. Anthers 3–4 mm long.
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