Japan Flora: Perennial; culms slender, 2分-60 cm. long; leaf-blades 10-20 cm. long, 4-10 mm. wide, flat or with slightly involute margins, smooth or nearly so, glabrous beneath, sparsely pilose above; ligules truncate or acute, 2-6 mm. long; panicles 5-10 cm. long, usually nodding, lustrous, rather densely spiculose, the branches geminate, smooth, often with a few hairs just below the spikelets; spike­lets oblong, rather compressed, 5-7 mm. long, brownish green; glumes unequal, membranous, folded, glabrous, the first ovate, 3-4 mm. long, abruptly acute, 1-nerved, the second broadly lanceolate, 5-7 mm. long, gradually acuminate, 3-nerved; sterile lemmas chartaceous, brown, nearly as long as the up­per glume, with long, brown hairs except at the bifid apex, the lower with a short erect awn from above the middle, the upper with a geniculate, twisted awn 4-5 mm. long, inserted near the base; anthers 2-2.5 mm. long.  June-July. In mountains. 

Honshu (centr. and n. distr. and Mount Omine in Yamato). 

var. sikokianum (Ohwi) Ohwi.  Leaf-blades loosely involute, 2-6 mm. wide; panicles denser, the second glume oblong-ovate, abruptly acu­minate.  July-Aug. High mountains.

Shikoku, Kyushu (Yakushima)