perennial, frequently with extravaginal innovation shoots beside some intravaginal ones, or annual (or at least flowering the first year); culms fascicled, erect or shortly ascending, stout or rather so, 2–4 ft. long, simple and 4–7-noded below the spurious panicle; sheaths tight, quite glabrous, subherbaceous or the lowermost firmer and sometimes subpersistent, 2–3 in. long; upper shorter than the internodes; ligules very short, rounded; blades linear to linear-lanceolate from a broader rounded or subcordate base, tapering to a long setaceous point, 1/2–1 ft. by 3–6 lin. (in the South African specimens), flat, rather flaccid, dull-green or subglaucous, glabrous, smooth or the margins scabrid; panicles more or less compound, narrow, often interrupted, 4–6 in. long, rarely longer; racemes 4–9 lin. long, 2-nate, at length reflexed, or horizontally spreading on slender peduncles, which are 2–4 in. long, and subtended by lanceolate boat-shaped many-nerved scarious reddish spathes 1/2 to 1 in. long; joints and pedicels linear, slender or the lowest somewhat stout, 1–1 1/4 lin. long, densely hairy, mainly along the margins, tips minutely cupular, toothed; spikelets of the lowest pair of the sessile raceme alike, ♂, the sessile of all the other pairs hermaphrodite, the pedicelled ♂; hermaphrodite spikelets lanceolate, 2–2 1/4 lin. long, often variegated; lower glume subacute or obscurely 2-toothed, dorsally flattened with a narrow groove from the middle downward corresponding to a keel on the inner side, keels narrowly or obscurely winged and scabrid above, evanescent below; upper glume lanceolate, acute, 1-sub-3-nerved; valves hyaline, lower oblong, 1 3/4 lin. long, 2-nerved, ciliate; upper scarcely shorter, very narrow, linear, deeply bifid, lobes very fine, awn 5–7 lin. long, slender, bent just below the middle, glabrous below the bend; pale 0; anthers 1 lin. long; pedicelled spikelets oblong, subacute, 2 lin. long; lower glume 9–11-nerved, upper 3-nerved; lower valve oblong, almost equalling the glumes, 2-nerved, upper and pale 0; anthers 1 1/2 lin. long. null
