Loosely tufted perennial, sometimes with creeping rhizomes; culms 10-40 cm high, simple, erect or ascending. Leaf-blades up to 15 cm long, 1-2.5 mm wide, flat or folded, glabrous or hairy; ligule up to 1 mm long. Panicle narrowly oblong, 2-10 cm long, usually lobed or interrupted in the lower part. Spikelets 2-3-flowered, silvery-green, brownish or purplish; glumes glabrous or shortly hairy along the keel, acuminate, mucronate or shortly aristulate, the lower narrowly lanceolate, 3-4.5 mm long, 1-nerved, the upper oblong-elliptic,4-5.5 mm long, 3-nerved; lemmas oblong-elliptic, 35-5.5 mm long, 3-nerved, glabrous, acuminate or mucronate, awnless; anthers about 2 mm long.