Plants without rhizomes, with knotty bases, forming tufts or small clumps. Flowering stems 20–70 cm long, erect, dull, minutely hairy below the nodes, often thickened and somewhat bulblike at the base, not rooting at the lower nodes. Leaf sheaths glabrous or roughened (rarely short‑hairy), keeled, the ligule 0.2–0.6 mm long. Leaf blades 2–25 cm long, 0.5–3.0 mm wide, flat, folded longitudinally or with loosely inrolled margins, roughened on the upper surface. Inflorescences dense, spikelike, mostly terminal panicles 4–15 cm long, linear in outline, the base usually noticeably stalked and not enclosed by the subtending leaf sheath, the branches short, appressed to the main axis. Spikelets 2.5–4.1 mm long, short‑stalked, the stalks shorter than to less than 2 times as long as the spikelets. Glumes about the same length, 1.5–3.0 mm long, about 2/3 as long as the floret, lanceolate to narrowly ovate, strongly overlapping at the base, the margins curved from below the middle and tapered to the sharply pointed tip, 1‑nerved, awnless or with an awn 0.1–0.5 mm long. Lemma 2.5–4.1 mm long, lanceolate to narrowly ovate, the tip sharply pointed (rarely blunt and with a short, sharp point), awnless, glabrous at the base, otherwise roughened along the nerves. Anthers 1.2–1.8 mm long. Fruits 1.6–2.4 mm long. July–October.

Scattered in the southern half of the state and northwestern Missouri, mostly in the Ozark Division (Ohio to North Dakota south to Missouri, Oklahoma, and New Mexico; Canada). Glades, edges and exposed ledges of bluffs, loess hill prairies, and rarely upland prairies and bottomland forests, often on calcareous substrates.