Culms 5-15 dm; sheaths smooth or nearly so; ligule truncate, 1 mm; main blades 1-2 cm wide, glabrous or sometimes soft-hairy; panicle large, 1-2(-3) dm, freely branched, the slender branchlets spreading, each bearing 1-4 spike-like racemes 1-2 cm; spikelets short-pediceled, closely imbricate and appressed to each other, broadly elliptic to orbicular; lemmas 3.8-5.6 mm, more than half as wide, hispid-ciliate on the veins and keel; stamens 2; 2n=48. Swamps and streambanks on the coastal plain from se. Va. to Fla., and Tex., n. in the Mississippi Valley to Minn. and Wis.
Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.