Tufted perennial; culms 25-110 cm high, erect or geniculately ascending, slender or stout. Leaf-blades flat, 6-20 cm long, 1.5-5 mm wide, smooth or scaberulous. Spike often flexuous, usually nodding, 5-15 cm long. Spikelets paired (sometimes in threes) at the nodes of the rhachis, shortly but distinctly pedicelled; glumes elliptic or narrowly lanceolate, 4-9 mm long, much shorter than the body of the lowest lemma, conspicuously 1-3-nerved, acute or produced into a short awn up to 2 mm long; lemma lanceolate, 8-11 mm long (excluding the awn), scabrid or shortly hairy, acute, produced into a flexuous awn 15-30 mm long.