Perennial, with stout scaly rhizomes. Culms erect, stiff, 50–120 cm, 2–3 mm in diam., branching at lower nodes forming leafy fascicles, nodes glabrous or pubescent. Leaf sheaths glabrous or shortly tuberculate-hispid, margins ciliate; leaf blades erect or stiffly divaricate, flat, leathery, (6–)15–30 cm × 5–10 mm, glabrous except for basal fringe and spaced bristles on lower margins, lacking an obvious midvein, apex acuminate; ligule ca. 0.2 mm. Panicle narrowly elliptic-oblong in outline, fairly dense, 9–15(–27) cm; central axis scabrid; branches 1.5–7 cm, narrowly ascending, lower often with branchlets; pedicels slender, finely scaberulous.Spikelets 4–5 mm, yellowish brown; glumes 3(–5)-veined, setose from large tubercles along the raised veins, apex narrowly acuminate; lower glume 3.1–3.7 mm; upper glume 3.8–4.1 mm; lower floret equal to lower glume or slightly longer; upper floret 2–2.5 mm, lemma apex entire, awned; awn geniculate with brown twisted column, 2.2–3 mm; callus hairs 1/4 length of lemma. Fl. and fr. Sep–Nov.

This is a lowland species with distinctive, smooth, leathery leaf blades and a rather dense panicle of setose, awned spikelets.

Dry slopes; ca. 500 m. Guangxi, Guizhou [Vietnam].