A tufted grass to 60 cm with hairy stems and flat broad (to 12 mm wide), yellow-green leaves, which are drooping and softly hairy. Inflorescences 6 to 15 cm long, spike-like, loose and often drooping at the tip with 4 to 12 spikelets. Lemmas linear-lanceolate, hairy 7 to 11 mm long with rough awns to 12 mm.

Sheaths and leaves have long hairs. The inflorescence is a spike with almost stalkless (sessile), rounded (not flattened) spikelets alternating up the rachis but slightly angled away from it.

Open woods and scrub.

June to July.

Perennial.

Common over most of Britain except the north of Scotland.

Common in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 405 of the 617 tetrads.