Perennial (Barter), up to 5 ft. high. Culms (only the upper parts known) erect, rather slender, smooth, glabrous. Leaf-sheaths glabrous, smooth, the uppermost very long; ligules short, scarious, pubescent; blades (uppermost) subsetaceously convolute, 1/2 ft. long, smooth, glabrous, closely nerved, 2 primary lateral nerves on each side more prominent below. Panicle linear-oblong, erect or somewhat flaccid, 6–10 in. long; rhachis smooth, glabrous; branches semiverticillate, many fascicled at the nodes, very unequal, the longest up to 4 in. long and up to 6-noded, repeatedly divided, filiform to capillary, hairy towards the tips. Racemes 3–1-noded, each sessile spikelet save the uppermost accompanied by an empty pedicel, the uppermost (or in 1-noded racemes the solitary spikelet) by 2 empty pedicels; joints and pedicels alike, finely filiform, ciliate, cilia up to 1/2 lin. long, joints 2 1/2–3 lin. long, pedicels 1 1/2–2 lin. long. Spikelets lanceolate to lanceolate-oblong, subacuminate, 2–2 1/2 lin. long, pale brown to straw-colour. Glumes equal, chartaceous, thin; lower minutely truncate, loosely hairy on the back, scabrid on the subterminal keels, finely 9-nerved; upper very similar, 5-nerved. Valves equally long; of lower floret broad-lanceolate-oblong, 2 lin. long, hyaline, densely ciliolate upwards, 2-nerved; of upper floret oblong, ciliolate upwards, 3-nerved, lobes adnate to the awn; awn 4 lin. long, very slender, kneed at and twisted below the middle. Lodicules glabrous. Anthers 1 1/4 lin. long. Grain oblong, 1 lin. long, reddish-brown.
