Tufted perennial; culms 10-70 cm high, usually erect, clothed at the base with the hardened remains of old leaf-sheaths forming a bulbous swelling. Leaf-blades flat or folded, mostly basal, 1.5-17cm long, 1-3.5mm wide, long-acuminate, scabrid on the margins and often on both surfaces; ligule blunt, 1.5-3mm long. Panicle oblong or pyramidal, 1.5-10cm long, usually fairly dense, sometimes loose or interrupted; branches (1)2-3(-4) at the lower nodes, ascending, smooth below. Spikelets 2-4(-6)-flowered, ovate-elliptic, (3-)3.5-7mm long, green or tinged with purple; glumes subequal, 2-3(-3.5)mm long, the lower 1-nerved, the upper broader, 3-nerved; lemmas elliptic-lanceolate in side-view, 2-3.5(-4)mm long, blunt or subacute, completely hairless on the surface and on the nerves and without any wool at the base, sometimes scaberulous along the keel and marginal nerves; palea slightly shorter than the lemma, scabrid on the keels; anthers 0.6-2mm long.