Perennial, sometimes short-lived, usually densely caespitose, up to 75 cm or more high. Leaf-blades setaceous, convolute, up to 15 cm long, glabrous beneath, scaberulous above. Panicle 10-15 cm long, contacted or sometimes effuse. Spikelets pallid; glumes glabrous or with a few hairs on the margins, unequal, the lower 8 mm long, the upper 9-10 mm long; lemma 2-35 mm long, finely tuberculate above, abruptly passing into the awn; callus 1 mm long, acute, bearded, the hairs gradually increasing in length upward; column of awn ± 5 mm long, with a dense pencil of hairs at the branching point of the awns, otherwise glabrous; central branch of the awn 2-3.5 cm long, plumose in the upper two-thirds; lateral branches glabrous, up to 12 mm long.