Perennial, sometimes short-lived, usually densely caespitose, up to 75 cm or more high. Leaf-blades setaceous, convolute, up to 15 cm long, glabrous beneath, scaberulous above. Panicle 10-15 cm long, contacted or sometimes effuse. Spikelets pallid; glumes glabrous or with a few hairs on the margins, unequal, the lower 8 mm long, the upper 9-10 mm long; lemma 2-35 mm long, finely tuberculate above, abruptly passing into the awn; callus 1 mm long, acute, bearded, the hairs gradually increasing in length upward; column of awn ± 5 mm long, with a dense pencil of hairs at the branching point of the awns, otherwise glabrous; central branch of the awn 2-3.5 cm long, plumose in the upper two-thirds; lateral branches glabrous, up to 12 mm long.

Type: South Africa, Lichtenstein (B).

Distribution: Pakistan (Sind, Punjab & N.W.F.P.); Somalia south to Tanzania and west to Senegal; South Africa extending northward to Rhodesia and Angola.

This species is close to, and sometimes hybridises with Stipagrostis hirtigluma. It is distinguished by the glabrous glumes, the finer tubercles and abruptly narrowed tip of the lemma, the shorter awns with naked column and bearded branching point, and by the callus-hairs which are not arranged in tufts. It has not previously been reported from outside Africa.