Japan Flora: Culms rather tall, 50-100 cm. long; leaf-blades 15-25 cm. long, 1- 10 mm. wide, sometimes sparingly pilose, flat; ligules 1-3 mm. long; panicles rather broad, sometimes slighdy nodding, the branches subverticillate; spikelets yellowish brown or rarely pale green, usually purple-variegated, 6-10 mm. long, 1- to 5-flowered; glumes somewhat unequal, acuminate, lanceo­late, the first 3-4 mm., the second 5-7 mm. long; lemmas broadly lanceolate, 6-7 mm. long, short-acuminate, charta­ceous; the awn 7-12 mm. long, prominently geniculate and twisted; anthers linear; ovary glabrous.  July-Aug. Grassy places.

lowlands and low mountains in Hokkaido, high moun­tains of Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu. e. Europe, Siberia, China, Manchuria, Kamchatka, Sakhalin, and Alaska.