Plants cespitose, not rhizomatous, usually somewhat glaucous. Culms 50-110 cm, erect or somewhat geniculate at the base; nodes 6-9, mostly exposed, glabrous. Leaves evenly distributed; sheaths usually glabrous, occasionally pilose, hairs somewhat retrorse; auricles about 1 mm, pale or brownish; ligules about 1 mm, erose; blades 3-12 mm wide, lax, adaxial surfaces sparsely scabridulous, sometimes hispidulous to pilose on the veins, usually glaucous. Spikes 4-12 cm long, 2-3 cm wide, erect, the bases sometimes sheathed, with 2 spikelets per node; internodes 3-6 mm, about 0.2 mm thick at the thinnest sections, with 2 hispid dorsal angles, without green lateral bands. Spikelets 10-15 mm excluding the awns, 18-30 mm including the awns, appressed, with 3-5(6) florets, lowest florets functional; disarticulation above the glumes, beneath each floret. Glumes subequal, 12-22 mm long including the undifferentiated awns, 0.2-0.3(0.6) mm wide, setaceous, entire, 0-1(2)-veined, tapering from the base, glabrous, margins firm, awns more or less straight; lemmas 8-10 mm, usually scabrous-hispid or thinly strigose, at least distally, awns 8-22 mm, straight or flexuous; paleas 7-8 mm, obtuse, often emarginate; anthers 2.5-4 mm. Anthesis May to June. 2n = unknown.

Elymus pringlei grows on moist slopes and canyons, in pine and deciduous tree woods, at 1500-2250 m in the Sierra Madre Orientale of eastern Mexico . This poorly known species is similar to Elymus texensis -and E. interruptus . It is included here because it seems likely that it also grows in southern Texas, having been collected in Coahuila, Mexico , 54 miles from the border, near Big Bend National Park (Campbell 2002).