Annual, but base unknown. Culms evidently tall and stout, branched with the branches erect, terete, villous towards the inflorescence and with a ring of dense hairs at the nodes, otherwise glabrous and smooth. Leaf-sheaths loose, terete, longer than the internodes, striate, glabrous and smooth; ligule reduced to a densely ciliate rim; blade lanceolate, contracted at the base, acute, up to 2 ft. or more long and 15 lin. wide, flat, firm, green, scaberulous on both surfaces or nearly smooth below, glabrous, midrib prominent and rounded below towards the sheath, lateral nerves up to 8 on each side of the midrib. False spike dense, linear-lanceolate in outline, 9 1/2 in. long, 11 lin. wide at the base (inclusive of the bristles), yellowish-brown; rhachis moderately stout, terete, villous, closely beset with the stalks of the persistent involucres; stalks villous up to 2 1/2 lin. long, slightly spreading; bristles up to 50 to each involucre, very slender, free to the base, the outer scaberulous, the inner (6–10) loosely plumose with tubercle-based hairs for about two-thirds their length and with scaberulous tips, subequal and about as long as the spikelet, the remainder mostly shorter. Spikelets solitary or paired, pedicelled with the pedicel up to 1/2 lin. long, lanceolate to narrowly oblong, 3 1/2–4 1/4 lin. long, nearly glabrous. Glumes oblate, rotundate or truncate, up to 2/3 lin. long, hyaline and nerveless. Lower floret ♂: valve when flattened ovate-oblong or oblong, subacute or obtuse and mucronate, nearly as long as the spikelet, firmly membranous, 3–4-nerved, scaberulous on the nerves; valvule linear-lanceolate, minutely truncate, nearly as long as the valve, keels scaberulous. Upper floret hermaphrodite: valve when flattened ovate, subacute or obtuse and mucronate, as long as the spikelet, chartaceous, 7-nerved, smooth and shining on the back below the prominently nerved tip, scaberulous and with a few short hairs near the margins; valvule linear, nearly as long as the valve. Lodicules 0. Anthers 2 lin. long, with densely penicillate tips. Styles connate.