Tufted perennial with creeping rhizomes; culms 30-70 cm high, erect, rather stout, smooth or very slightly rough beneath the panicle. Leaf-blades glaucous, up to 30 cm long, 3.56 mm wide, convolute, firm, scabrid; ligule 2.4-6 mm long, lacerate. Panicle erect, lanceolate, 7-15 cm long, lax, usually deeply suffused with purple. Spikelets 4-7 mm long, the rhachilla prolonged and usually thinly to densely long hairy; glumes subequal, lanceolate-acuminate, scaberulous; lemma about two-thirds the length of the glumes, scaberulous, 4-toothed at the tip, the teeth aristulate with bristles 0.5-1 mm long; awn 2.5-4.5 mm long, arising from the base of the teeth; callus hairs about as long as the floret.

Type: Kashmir, Stoliczka (K).

Distribution: Kashmir, endemic.

A very distinctive plant with broad purple glumes and 4-aristulate lemma. 3200-5000 m.