Caespitose perennial; culms 20-120 cm high, erect. Leaf-blades flat, up to 40 cm long and 10 mm wide, firm, glaucous. Panicle lanceolate to broadly ovate, 10-30 cm long; primary branches stout, usually with secondary branchlets but sometimes almost raceme-like, the spikelets on short pedicles 1-5 mm long. Spikelets 6-28 (-47)-flowered, narrowly ovate to suborbicular, 6-16(23) mm long, 3-10 mm wide, strongly flattened, green tinged with brownish purple, disarticulating below the glumes at maturity and falling entire; glumes lanceolate in side-view, subequal, 24 mm long; lemma narrowly ovate in side-view, 3-4.5 mm long, strongly keeled, the keel scaberulous, narrowly obtuse; palea 2-nerved, the nerves thickened, cartilaginous and bearing a hyaline minutely ciliolate wing; anthers 3, 2 mm long. Caryopsis ellipsoid, 1-1.5 mm long.