perennial, tufted; culms erect, very robust, fascicled at the base with 1 or 2 intravaginal innovation shoots, 2–3 ft. high, glabrous, smooth, about 3-noded, sheathed right up to the panicle, or one of the intermediate nodes shortly exserted; basal sheaths usually crowded, very close, coriaceous, 1/4– 1/2 ft. long, obscurely striate, very minutely pubescent or tomentose and at the same time pruinose from waxy granules, at length glabrescent, upper looser, pubescent or glabrous, slightly scaberulous, uppermost tumid, pubescent and scaberulous; ligule a dense fringe of short hairs; blades loosely filiform-involute below, very tightly involute or canaliculate and very long and finely attenuate in the upper part, acute, 1 to more than 2 ft. long, up to 2 1/2 lin. broad when expanded, very hard, flexuous, glabrous, scabrid along the margins and on the back in the upper part, upper surface whitish, strongly and closely striate; panicle erect, oblong, very dense, 4–7 in. long; axis stout, striate, angular, glabrous; branches solitary, lowest up to 3 in. long, abundantly and closely divided from the base, branchlets and pedicels filiform to subcapillary, scaberulous to scabrid; pedicels 1/2–2 lin. long; spikelets densely crowded, straw-coloured, 5 1/2–6 1/2 lin. long; florets 3–4, the uppermost rudimentary; rhachilla glabrous, joints 1/2–3 1/4 lin. long; glumes lanceolate, long acuminate, hyaline, pubescent, 1-nerved, keel smooth; valves oblong in profile, body 1 3/4 lin. long, villous all over, 7–9-nerved; lobes narrow, about 1–1 1/2 lin. long, scaberulous and ciliolate, gradually passing into a mucro or short fine bristle, as long as the lobe or shorter; awn 4–6 lin. long, kneed at the middle, loosely twisted below, bristle flattened; callus obtuse, very short, bearded; pales linear-oblong, obtuse, 1 3/4 lin. long, hairy below, keels stout, densely ciliolate above; lodicules ciliate; anthers almost 1 1/2 lin. long; ovary glabrous, styles slender, distinct. null
