Perennial; culms 30-100 cm high, erect, robust. Leaf-blades mostly cauline, up to 30 cm long and 5 mm wide, but sometimes basal and much shorter, bluntly acute to acuminate, glabrous or sometimes with a few tubercle-based hairs. Panicle ovate, 3-12 cm long, with delicate capillary branches fulvously bearded at the tip. Sessile spikelet narrowly oblong; lower glume 4-7 mm long, laterally compressed to a rounded keel, hispidulous at the tip; upper glume glabrous or with a few white hairs on the keel, bearing an awn 6-10 mm long; upper lemma minutely bidentate, with a glabrous or pubescent awn 2-3(-3.5) cm long. Pedicelled spikelets (3-) 4.5-8 mm long, lower glume bearing an awn 3.5-6.5 mm long; pedicels fulvously villous, a quarter to a third the length of the sessile spikelet.