perennial, tufted; innovation shoots mostly intravaginal; culms erect, rather slender, 1–3 ft. long, glabrous, simple or more or less branched and 3–6-noded below the panicle, longest internode generally less than 1/2 ft. long; sheaths tight, glabrous, the lowest crowded, compressed, firm, persistent, the upper terete, shorter than the internodes; ligules oblong, obtuse, up to 1 1/2 lin. long; blades narrow, linear, tapering to a long fine point, 4 in. to more than 1 ft. by 3/4–1 1/2 lin., glabrous, finely scaberulous, more or less glaucous, turning reddish, midrib white; panicle spathaceous, lax, contracted, sometimes reduced to a few simple branches, 1/2 to more than 1 ft. long; racemes 3/4–1 1/2 lin. long, silvery, villous, on very slender, usually nodding, pubescent or villous, rarely glabrous peduncles, which are 1–3 lin. long, and more or less exserted from the long very narrow finely acuminate glabrous or scantily hairy reddish spathes; joints filiform, obliquely truncate, up to 2 lin. long, densely ciliate, pedicels very similar, often produced (in the South African species) into a linear or subulate appendage facing the upper glume; spikelets of the lowest pair of the sessile raceme alike, ♂, the sessile of all the other pairs hermaphrodite, the pedicelled ♂; hermaphrodite spikelets linear-oblong, 2–3 lin. long, pale or purplish; lower glume chartaceous, minutely truncate, dorsally flattened, villous, keels obscure except close to the membranous reddish tips, intracarinal nerves about 5, evanescent below; upper glume lanceolate-oblong, obtuse, mucronate, 3-nerved, margins ciliate, keel hirsute above; lower valve hyaline, linear-oblong, obtuse, faintly 2-nerved, softly ciliate; upper very narrow, linear, bifid, about 1 1/2 lin. long, ciliate, base margins and lobes hyaline, awn stout, pubescent, 1–1 1/2 in. long, kneed below the middle; pale very minute or 0; anthers 3/4–1 lin. long; pedicelled spikelets lanceolate, 2 1/2–3 lin. long; lower glume herbaceous, 7–11-nerved, mucronate or shortly awned; upper lanceolate-oblong, acute, 3-nerved, softly ciliate; lower valve as in the hermaphrodite spikelets, but 1–3-nerved; upper linear, ciliate, nerveless, usually much shorter than the lower or obsolete. null
