perennial (always?); culms erect, sometimes geniculate, stout, up to 5 ft. long, glabrous, up to 7-noded; sheaths quite glabrous or the uppermost more or less hairy, those of the innovation shoots compressed, the others terete or slightly keeled in the upper part, the lowest whitish, almost scarious; ligules obtuse, scarious up to 2 lin. long; blades linear, tapering to a long fine point, 1/2–1 1/2 ft. by 3–7 lin., subrigid to almost flaccid, flat, glabrous, rarely scantily hirsute near the base, scabrid, at least upwards, margins scabrid to subspinulous; panicle large, oblong to ovate, lax, decompound, up to 1 1/2 ft. long; spathes lanceolate, acuminate, narrow or broad, 1–1 1/2 in. long, scarious, reddish; common peduncles filiform, glabrous except the curved tips, which are beset with long yellowish tubercle-based hairs and enclosed in the spathe or shortly and usually laterally exserted; racemes 1/2–1 in. long, dense, scarcely spreading, very shortly and unequally peduncled; joints 5 to many, filiform, obliquely truncate, up to 1 lin. long, shortly whitish ciliate, pedicels very similar; spikelets of the lowest pair of the sessile raceme alike, ♂, the sessile of all the other pairs hermaphrodite, the pedicelled ♂; hermaphrodite spikelets linear-oblong, 2–2 1/2 lin. long, pale; lower glume subchartaceous to almost membranous, minutely truncate, dorsally flattened, glabrous or more or less villous, intracarinal nerves 5, some at least evanescent below, keels spinulous ciliate above, callus bearded; upper membranous, obtuse, 3-nerved, nerves scabrid near the tip; lower valve oblong, obtuse, faintly 2–3-nerved, ciliate; upper shortly 2-fid, 1-nerved, lobes oblong, obtuse, subglabrous, awn about 10–15 lin. (rarely 2–2 1/2 in.) long, pubescent and kneed below the middle; pale 0; anthers 1 lin. long; pedicelled spikelets lanceolate, usually pale, 2 1/2–4 lin. long, glabrous or hairy; lower glume subherbaceous, acutely acuminate, 9–11-nerved, often with a terminal bristle (up to 2 1/2 lin. long), keels spinulous ciliate; upper cuspidate, 3-nerved, ciliate; lower valve linear-oblong, obtuse, equalling the glumes, 1–3-nerved; upper narrow, linear-cuneate, 1–3 lin. long, 1-nerved; anthers 1 1/2–2 lin. long. null
