A small forest bamboo, common in Chhukha district from 1,000m to 2,000m, potentially up to 1.5cm in diameter and 4m in height, but usually much smaller because of heavy browsing by animals. It can easily be recognised by the dense ring of brown hairs at the base of the culm sheath and on the culm node. The young culms also have a dense coating of slippery wax over the entire internode. The culm sheaths are thin and papery, and on small culms of heavily browsed clumps they are often convex at the shoulders rather than concave. All culm sheaths are rough inside at the 

top near the ligule, with dense hairs and short spines. This species provides foliage for browsing livestock, and the culms are collected in small quantities for tying and basket making. It is also planted around farmland, and it is small enough to be used on the banks of rain-fed terrace risers, where it would be effective in soil stabilisation. This species flowered near Chhukha in 1987. Most of the clumps died after flowering, but seedlings produced new clumps where there was some natural protection from livestock, these flowering again in cultivation in 2014.