Culms 25-70 cm. Blades 5-15 cm long, 4-7 mm wide. Panicles 8-15 cm long, 2-6 cm wide, green or purplish; branches loosely ascending. Spikelets 5-10 mm (including the awns). Glumes 4-5 mm; lemmas 3-4 mm, conspicuously long-pilose basally, awns and teeth more or less alternating. Caryopsesabout 1.5 mm, plump, elliptical; embryos about 1/2 as long as the caryopses. 2n = 20.
Cottea pappophoroides grows on open hillsides from Arizona and Texas south to central Mexico, and from Ecuador to Argentina.