Tufted perennial with creeping rhizomes; culms up to 120 cm high, erect, rather slender, smooth or scaberulous beneath the panicle. Leaf-blades up to 30 cm long, 3.5-6 mm wide, flat or convolute, scabrid; ligule 4-5 mm long, blunt. Panicle erect, lanceolate, 8-15 cm long, lax, green or tinged with purple. Spikelets 5-6 mm long, the rhachilla markedly prolonged and densely penicillate; glumes subequal, lanceolate-acuminate, scaberulous; lemma about two-thirds the length of the glumes, scaberulous, shortly 4-toothed at the tip; awn 2.5-4 mm long, arising from near the base of the lemma; callus hairs about as long as the floret or slightly shorter.