Habit: 		Perennial, with rhizomes.
Culm: 		60-120 cm. tall, slender, simple.
Blades:		7-25 cm. long, 7-15 mm. wide, tapering to both ends, smooth beneath, scabrous above,
		flat, spreading.
Sheaths: 	Glabrous or scabrous, rarely retrorsely pubescent.
Ligule: 	Membranous.
Inflorescence: 	Loosely flowered terminal spike, 7-15 cm. long, short-exserted or
		partially included, nodding, the internodes of the slender flattened rachis 5-10 mm. long.
Spikelets: 	Mostly in pairs on very short pedicels, 1-1.5 cm. long, exclusive of awns,
		at first erect but soon widely spreading, 2-4-flowered, rachilla articulate below the lemmas.
Glumes: 	Reduced to short or minute awns, the first usually obsolete, both often wanting
		in the upper spikelets.
Lemmas: 	8-12 mm. long, acuminate, lanceolate, rigid, convolute, rounded on the back,
		5-nerved, the nerves obscure except towards the tip, pubescent at least at the
		summit or nearly glabrous, tapering into a long slender, straight awn, 1-4 cm. long.
Palea: 		About as long as the body of its lemma.
Fruit: 		Grain oblong, pubescent at the summit, free within the lemmas and palea.
Habitat: 	Moist or rocky woods.  June-July.
Synonyms:	Elymus hystrix L. var. hystrix
		Hystrix hystrix  (L.) Millsp.