Rhizomatous perennial; culms up to 60 cm high, slender, erect. Leaf-blades linear, up to 17 cm long, 1.5-2 mm wide, flat or setaceously convolute, smooth and glabrous; ligule cylindrical, 35-5 mm long, unequally 2-toothed; sheaths smooth and glabrous. Panicle up to 15 cm long, lax, simple or sparingly branched, the spikelets distant and secund. Spikelets becoming broadly ovate, 7-8 mm long, with 3 fertile florets separated by internodes each about 2 mm long; glumes broadly elliptic, subacute, broadly hyaline on the margins and at the tip, the lower 5.5 mm long, the upper 6-65 mm long; lemma of fertile floret elliptic-oblong, 5-5.5 mm long, obtuse or subacute, strongly 7-nerved, scaberulous and hairless.

Fl. & Fr. Per,: July-August.

Syntypes: USSR, Tian-Shan, Fedtschenko (LE), Afghanistan, Aitchison 1257 (K; this also the holotype of M. gracilis), and others.

Distribution: Kashmir; southern USSR (Tadzhikistan, Tian-Shan) and Afghanistan (Kurram Valley).

Melica secunda has been collected only once in Kashmir, but in Afghanistan it is described by Aitchison as being common above 3000 m. It grows on cliffs and rocky slopes at high altitudes.