Annual; culms erect or geniculately ascending, up to 45 cm high. Leaf-blades up to 10 cm long and 3.5 mm wide; sheaths pubescent. Panicle ovate, 4-10 cm long, loose and open, the branches whorled. Spikelets broadly elliptical, becoming wedge-shaped, 4-7-flowered, 5.5-8.5 mm long excluding the awns, the lemmas not overlapping, leaving the internodes exposed; lower glume lanceolate, 3-4 mm long, 1-nerved; upper glume narrowly ovate, 4-5.5 mm long, 3-nerved; lemmas oblanceolate in side view, the lowest 3-4.5 mm long, strongly involute, herbaceous, 5-7(-9)-nerved, ciliolate on the margins, minutely 2-toothed with a straight awn 12-20 mm long from between the teeth; palea as long as the lemma, ciliolate on the keels; anthers 0.3-0.5 mm long.

Fl. & Fr. Per.: April-July.

Type: Turkestan, Lehmann (P).

Distribution: Pakistan (Baluchistan, N. W. F. P. & Kashmir); Iran to the western Himalayas; Turkestan.

A gregarious species of alpine slopes.