Tufted perennial with short rhizomes; culms 60-150 cm high, erect, smooth or slightly scaberulous beneath the panicle. Leaf-blades up to 45 cm long, 2.5-8 mm wide, mostly flat, sometimes convolute, faintly scaberulous; ligule 4-7 mm long, obtuse. Panicle nodding, lanceolate or narrowly lanceolate, 10-25(-30) cm long, lax or dense, usually tinged with purple. Spikelets 4.5-6.5 mm long, the rhachilla prolonged and penicillate; glumes subequal, lanceolate, scabrid; lemma about three-quarters the length of the glumes, scaberulous, 2-toothed at the tip; awn about 1-1.5 times the length of the lemma, inserted at or near its middle, twisted below and slightly bent; callus hairs about a third the length of the floret.