The upper (adaxial) surface of the leaves is densely covered with short hairs.

The spikelets are 8–14 mm (0.3–0.6 in) long, purple to brown in color, and have 3 to 6 individual florets.

[1][6] Festuca scabrella was described in 1840 by John Torrey in William Jackson Hooker's Flora Boreali-Americana.

In temperate Asia it is native to Siberia and the Russian Far East, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Xinjiang in China.

[citation needed] Under the name Festuca scabrella, rough fescue is the provincial grass of Alberta.