General: Perennial, tufted grass from fibrous roots, sometimes flowering as a winter annual; stems 20-80 (100) cm tall.
Leaves: Sheaths open, smooth or minutely rough to hairy; blades flat, (2) 3-5 (6) mm wide, rough to hairy; ligules usually slightly minutely rough externally, irregularly jagged and more or less toothed, (1) 1.5-2 (2.5) mm long.
Flowers: Inflorescence a dense, spikelike to somewhat more open and interrupted panicle, (2) 5-15 cm long, the branches erect; spikelets 2-flowered; rachillas prolonged, with rudiments; glumes rough, the lower ones very narrow, scarcely 2 mm long, the upper ones much flattened, slightly hood-shaped, averaging about 2 mm long, 3-4 times as wide, the upper glumes rounded at the tips; lemmas oblong, rough, 2-2.6 mm long, unawned (rarely awn-tipped); anthers about 0.5 mm long.
Moist meadows, streambanks, shallow ponds and hot springs in the steppe and montane zones; rare in SC and SE BC; E to NB and S to ME, MA, PA, NC, FL, MS, LA, TX, NM, AZ and CA.
