Tufted perennial with long creeping rhizomes; culms 40-115 cm high, erect or ascending. Leaf-blades flat or ± convolute, up to 30 cm long, 2-7 mm wide, scabrid and sparsely long-hairy above, smooth and glabrous beneath. Spike lax or rather dense, 6-20 cm long, erect; rhachis joints scabrid along the margins. Spikelets 4-5-flowered, 10-15 mm long; glumes slightly unequal, oblong or lanceolate-oblong, 7-9 mm long, obtuse, truncate or obliquely truncate, scabrid on the midnerve towards the tip, sometimes hairy on the back; lemma oblong-elliptic, 9-11 mm long, glabrous or hairy, subobtuse, sometimes emarginate and apiculate; palea nearly as long as the lemma; anthers 4-6(-8) mm long.