Tufted perennial; culms 30-130 cm high, erect, slender or stout. Leaf-blades usually flat, convolute when dry, 10-30 cm long, 3-9 mm wide, smooth or scaberulous. Spike erect or sometimes nodding, 7-23 cm long. Spikelets in pairs at the nodes of the rhachis; glumes elliptic, 6-11 mm long (including the awn), almost as long as the body of the lowest lemma, conspicuously 3-5-nerved, acute or produced into a short awn up to 2 mm long; lemma elliptic, 6.5-11 mm long (excluding the awn), produced into a straight or slightly curved awn 8-15 mm long.

Fl. & Fr. Pr.: July-August.

Type: USSR, Siberia, Turczaninow (LE).

Distribution: Pakistan (N.W.F.P., Gilgit & Kashmir); Central Asia from Afghanistan to Siberia, Mongolia and China.

Plants with fewer-flowered spikelets and shorter glumes and lemmas have been separated as var. micranthus, but variation seems to be more or less continuous between the two extremes.

2000-4700 m.