General:
Annual grass from fibrous roots; stems erect to abruptly bent and ascending, 20-60 cm tall.

Leaves:
Lower sheaths densely soft-hairy to woolly, with long intertwined, curly hairs; blades (2) 3-8 mm wide, 5-15 cm long, flat, densely soft-hairy on both sides; ear-shaped lobes lacking at the leaf-bases; ligules more or less fringed with fine hairs, hairy on the back, more or less jagged, 1-1.5 mm long.

Flowers:
Inflorescence an open, nodding, racemose or nearly racemose panicle, 7-20 cm long, with all the branches and flowers on 1 side of the axis, the branches equalling or shorter than the spikelets; spikelets 8- to 30-flowered, somewhat compressed, broadly cylindrical or egg-shaped to lanceolate, smooth to short-hairy, 1.5-7 cm long, 7-15 mm wide; glumes smooth to rough, the lower ones 3- to 5- (7-) nerved, 4.5-7 mm long, the upper ones 7-nerved, 6-9 mm long; lemmas 7- to 9-nerved, firm-papery, smooth or more or less rough, somewhat compressed, with broadly translucent margins, 8-11 mm long, up to 6-8 mm wide, rounded at the tips, bidentate, awned, the awns flattened, sometimes twisted at the base, widely spreading at maturity, about 10 mm long, arising 1.5 mm or more below the lemma tips; anthers 1-1.3 mm long.

Source:  The Illustrated Flora of British Columbia