Plants perennial, without rhizomes, forming tufts or small clumps. Flowering stems 30–100 cm long, erect or ascending. Leaf sheaths glabrous or hairy, the ligule 1.2–3.0 mm long. Leaf blades 5–30 cm long, 3–10 mm wide, glabrous or hairy. Inflorescences with the 2–6(–8) spikelike branches mostly more than 2 cm apart along the main axis. Spikelike branches 4–12 cm long, erect to loosely ascending, the axis persistent, with a spikelet at the tip, narrow and unwinged, narrower than the spikelets, the spikelets dense and mostly strongly overlapping along the axis, occurring singly and appearing in 2 rows along the axis of each spikelike branch. Spikelets 2.4–3.4 mm long, broadly ovate to broadly obovate or nearly circular in outline, rounded or bluntly pointed at the tip. Lower glume absent. Upper glume 2.4–3.4 mm long, broadly ovate to broadly obovate or nearly circular, rounded at the tip, 5‑nerved, glabrous. Sterile floret with the lemma 2.4–3.4 mm long, broadly ovate to broadly obovate or nearly circular, rounded at the tip, 5(7)‑nerved, glabrous. Fertile floret with the lemma 2.2–3.4 mm long, broadly oblong‑elliptic to nearly circular. Anthers 0.8–1.2 mm long. 2n=40, 80. July–October.

Scattered to common south of the Missouri River, uncommon and sporadic farther north (eastern U.S. west to Illinois, Kansas, and Texas). Moist depressions of upland prairies, bottomland prairies, swamps, openings of bottomland and mesic upland forests, fens, banks of streams and spring branches, and margins of ponds, sinkhole ponds, lakes, and sloughs; also pastures, crop fields, fallow fields, old fields, ditches, roadsides, railroads, and moist, open, disturbed areas.

Missouri plants may be separated into three overlapping varieties.