Slender perennial; culms wiry, weak, often trailing, 10-30 cm long. Leaf-blades 1-4 cm long, 1-3 mm wide. Racemes 1-3.cm long, dense, borne upon a flexuous peduncle, bearing numerous long delicate yellow-brown awns. Spikelets narrowly elliptic-oblong, 13-2 mm long, the callus bearded with white hairs 2(-3) mm long; lower glume a little shorter than the spikelet; lower floret reduced to a hyaline lemma or wanting; upper glume and upper lemma bearing slender flexuous awns 8-20 mm long; stamen 1 (rarely 2),

Type locality: Japan.

Distribution: Pakistan (Punjab & N.W.F.P.); Afghanistan and India to Japan and the Solomon Islands.

This is a less robust plant than Pogonatherum paniceum with smaller spikelets and longer callus hairs. It grows in tufts along tracks and banks in deep forests and among rocks in rivers and streams, usually in the shade; ascending to 1500 m.