Plants forming compact rounded hummocks or symmetrical rings to over 1 m in diameter, 0.15–1 m high. Flowering culms 0.45–1 m high. Leaves: sheath glabrous on back, with silvery hairs more than 5 mm long on upper margins, orifice and ligule; ligule ciliate, 1–4 mm long; blade folded, rigid, 5–10 (–19) cm long, 0.6–1.1 mm wide, with pseudopetiole 3–5 mm long, glabrous or sparsely hairy. Inflorescence a spike 5–13 (–26) cm long, 1–1.5 cm wide. Spikelets biseriate, overlapping or separated, sessile or subsessile, lanceolate or linear-oblong, 11–26 mm long, (2–) 3–7 mm wide, tightly 6–20-flowered, pointed at apex, purple-green becoming straw-yellow; rachilla stout. Glumes ±equal, ovate, 4–7 mm long, entire or emarginate, sometimes mucronulate, scarious or cartilaginous to indurated, 3–5 (–9)-nerved (often asymmetrically), glabrous. Callus 0.2–0.4 mm long, blunt, densely bearded with hairs 3 mm long. Basal lemma broadly ovate, 5–8 mm long, entire, acuminate to aristulate, cartilaginous to indurated with lower margins scarious, strongly 3-nerved and with ±6 faint lateral nerves; midrib hirsute in lower half. Palea elliptic, shorter than lemma (±equal in upper florets), acute to minutely 2-lobed; body glabrous; keels with wings about 0.7 mm wide and sometimes exposed. Anthers 3 mm long.
Grows in shallow, skeletal, stony and gravelly soilson crests, slopes, outcrops, terraces and scree slopes of sandstone, quartzite,granite and laterite hills, foothills and ridges; also on sandy flats.
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