perennial (?); culms erect, usually from a very slender and sometimes ascending base, 3–6 ft. or more long, often rooting from the lower nodes, terete, glabrous, 6–10-noded, simple or branched; sheaths glabrous, rarely hirsute with tubercle-based hairs or villous at the nodes, terete or keeled in the upper part, the lowest whitish, withering or thrown off, the middle and upper usually shorter than the internodes; ligules membranous, rounded or truncate, very short; blades linear from a narrow base, long tapering to a fine point, 1/2 to over 1 1/2 ft. by 3–6 lin., rarely narrower, rigid to subflaccid, flat, glabrous or subhirsute at the base from tubercle-based hairs, scaberulous or smooth except the scabrid or spinulous margins, glaucous; panicle leafy, almost overtopped by its blades, linear-oblong, decompound, usually dense, 1/2–2 ft. long; spathes obliquely ovate, acute or acuminate, 5–9 lin. long, scarious, often brilliantly red or purple, glabrous; common peduncles filiform, enclosed, spreadingly hirsute above; racemes usually half exserted from the middle of the spathe and at a right angle to it, 2 1/2–4 1/2 lin. long, dense, subcontiguous, subsessile with a tuft of long rigid yellowish hairs at the base of the lower, joints 1–3, filiform, truncate, 1/2 lin. long, ciliate, pedicels very similar, the terminal up to 1 lin. long; spikelets of the lowest pair of the lower raceme alike, ♂ or barren, the sessile of all the other pairs hermaphrodite, the pedicelled ♂ or barren; hermaphrodite spikelets oblong, 1 1/2–2 lin. long, pale; lower glume thinly chartaceous, minutely truncate, dorsally flattened, subglabrous or pubescent, intracarinal nerves 3–5, mostly evanescent below the tip, keels spinulously ciliate above, callus very short, bearded; upper glume membranous, obtuse, 3-nerved, nerves scabrid or ciliate above; lower valve linear-oblong, truncate, obscurely 2-nerved or nerveless, subglabrous; upper minutely 2-toothed, almost reduced to a reddish fine geniculate awn, 5–10 lin. long; pale 0; stamens up to 1 lin. long; pedicelled spikelets oblong-lanceolate to oblong, 2–3 lin. long, pale to deep reddish, glabrous or pubescent; lower glume subherbaceous, acutely acuminate, 7–9-nerved, keels spinulously ciliate; upper acute, 3-nerved, ciliate; lower valve oblong, obtuse, up to 1 1/2 lin. long, faintly 1-sub-3-nerved; upper linear to cuneate-linear, 1 lin. long or reduced, or 0; anthers to 1 lin. long, if present. null