Plants forming clumps or colonies. Flowering stems (50–)70–150 cm long. Leaf sheaths usually glabrous, the ligule 3–8 mm long. Leaf blades 5–30 cm long, 3–8 mm wide, flat or rarely with the margins somewhat inrolled, sometimes somewhat glaucous on the upper surface. Inflorescences 7–25 cm long, open to dense, but not spikelike, the branches ascending to spreading or sometimes nodding at maturity, the longest branches usually more than 3 cm long. Glumes 2.0–4.5 mm long, elliptic‑lanceolate, tapered to a sharp point at the tip, glabrous to roughened or hairy. Floret with the basal tuft of hairs mostly about as long as the lemma. Lemma 1.4–3.8 mm long, narrowly ovate, the awn attached near the midpoint of the midnerve, straight or nearly so, sometimes difficult to distinguish from the basal hairs. 2n=28, 42, 45, 48, 49, 51, 52, 56, 62, 65, 66. May–August.

Scattered in the Glaciated Plains Division, south in eastern Missouri to the Mississippi Lowlands (northern U.S. south to North Carolina, Missouri, and California; Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Europe, Asia). Bottomland prairies and moist depressions of upland prairies; also roadsides, railroads, and ditches.

Some authors divide this species into two or three varieties, based upon minor differences in relative glume length and pubescence (Steyermark, 1963; Greene, 1984), but there is too much overlap in these features to allow recognition of such taxa. At least some populations in North America reproduce apomictically (Nygren, 1954), forming seeds directly from maternal tissues without fertilization.