Tufted glaucous perennial often with silky villous basal sheaths; culms up to 60 cm high, erect or ascending, slender. Leaf-blades up to 25 cm long, 2-4 mm wide, acute to acuminate, puberulous and with tubercle-based cilia on the margins especially near the base. Panicle ovate, 5-10 cm long, with long filiform flexuous branches fulvously bearded at the tip. Sessile spikelet narrowly elliptic to narrowly oblong; lower glume 5-8 mm long, laterally compressed to a rounded keel, shortly ciliate at the tip; upper glume ciliate at the tip, with an awn 1.5-10 mm long; upper lemma minutely bidentate, with a shortly pubescent awn 25-40 mm long. Pedicelled spikelets (4-) 7-10 mm long, the lower glume bearing an awn 4-7 mm long; pedicels fulvously villous, one-third to just less than half the length of the sessile spikelet.

Fl. & Fr. Per.: March-May and again September-November.

Type: Iran, Aucher 5465 (K).

Distribution: Pakistan (Sind, Baluchistan, Punjab, N.W.F.P. & Kashmir); Egypt, Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan and northern India.

A wiry desert species growing in the most inhospitable habitats such as rocky slopes and rock fissures. A welcome fodder plant in these places.