Densely caespitose perennial, up to 40 cm high; lowest sheaths and internodes covered with a thick flocculent fugacious wool. Leaf-blades filiform, rolled, 4-12 cm long, smooth, pungent, curved, sometimes forming a semi-circle or complete circle. Panicle 6-15 cm long, ± contracted. Spikelets pallid; glumes glabrous, unequal, -the lower 9-14 mm long, the upper 11-15 mm long; lemma 2.5-4 mm long, smooth, gradually passing into the awn; callus 1-1.7 mm long, acute, bearded, the hairs increasing in length upward; column of awn 5-10(15) mm long, glabrous; central branch of the awn 2.5-6 cm long, plumose in the upper two-thirds but with an excurrent naked tip; lateral branches naked, up to 25 mm long.

Fl.& Fr. Per.: throughout much of the year.

Type: Armenia, D.D. Schreber..

Distribution: Pakistan (Sind, Baluchistan, Punjab, N.W.F.P., Gilgit & Kashmir); Mediterranean region and the Middle East.

A desert grass of great value not only as a fodder but also by virtue of its ability to act as a sand-binder. Plants with glabrous basal sheaths and shorter than usual awns have been separated as var. brachypoda, but this variety does not appear to be of much taxonomic consequence.