Plants forming dense or sprawling hummocks 0.15–1.5 m high, to 1.5 m wide, sometimes with stolons or prop roots, resinous on foliage, glumes and sometimes on panicle axes, not aromatic. Flowering culms 0.45–2 m high. Leaves: lower sheaths flat, fan-shaped, to 15 mm wide, overlapping, ciliate along margins or glabrous; orifice bearded with resin-matted hairs to 8 mm long and with hairs extending along collar on ridge; blade flexuose or curling with age, flat or folded, to 60 cm long, 0.7–3.5 mm wide, not pseudopetiolate, cartilaginous and pubescent at base, prickly on margins. Panicles narrowly oblong or lanceolate, loose or dense, 12–26 cm long, 2–4 (–8) cm wide; peduncle purple; axis angular, ribbed, prickly-scabrid; branches simple or divided, naked near base, flat or triquetrous; primary branches to 13 cm long; secondary branches to 2 cm long. Spikelets solitary or paired, linear or oblong to lanceolate, usually laterally compressed, 4.5–18.5 mm long, 3–7 mm wide, loosely (closely when young) 4–10-flowered; pedicel 1–15 mm long; rachilla flat. Glumes equal or unequal, lanceolate or oblong (upper glume often broadly so), 4–10 mm long, obtuse or acute, entire or notched or minutely 3-lobed, cartilaginous, carinate or rounded on back, 3 (–5)-nerved, glabrous or partly pubescent. Callus obtuse or sometimes subacute, bearded with glabrous median rib. Basal lemma lanceolate to elliptic, 4–7 mm long, cartilaginous or body indurated and margins scarious, 9-nerved, hirsute on lower back, partly purple; lobes 0.5–3 mm long, subequal and all narrowly triangular or midlobe longer and subulate. Palea oblong-elliptic, slightly shorter than lemma; body indurated or cartilaginous, glabrous or lower part sparsely hairy; apex elongated, entire; keels winged. Anthers 2–3 mm long.
Grows in shallow often stony soils, especially on ridges and outcrops ofsandstone, quartzite, granite, limestone, slates and laterite; also found inhard red soils and deep sandy soils.
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