Annual (?), 4–5 ft. high. Culms in scanty fascicles, erect, stout, glabrous, simple and 3-noded below the panicle, sparingly rooting from the lower nodes. Leaf-sheaths terete or upwards keeled, tight, firm, glabrous and smooth; ligules scarious, oblong, 1 1/2 lin. long; blades linear from a hardly attenuated base, very long and finely tapering upwards, up to over 1 ft. by 4 lin., firm, glabrous, scabrid along the margins, otherwise smooth, midrib wide and whitish or pinkish on the upper side, primary lateral nerves 3 on each side. Spatheate panicle large, subeffuse, up to 2 ft. by over 1/2 ft., of 6 or 7 distant, upwards up to 8- (or more-) rayed mostly mixed tiers; compound rays few with each tier (the lowest tier 2-rayed), 3- or 2-noded, up to 3/4 ft. long, slender, glabrous, simple rays filiform, more or less compressed and angular, 1–2 in. long; lower and intermediate subtending leaves resembling the preceding leaves, but with much narrower and upwards shorter blades. Spatheoles very narrow, at length inrolled, tapering to a fine point, up to over 2–2 1/2 in. long, glabrous, reddish; peduncle filiform, equalling or more usually exceeding the spatheoles and exserted from them subterminally, arching or recurved in a semicircle upwards, but straightened out after the shedding of the racemes, minutely pubescent with long fine white tubercle-based hairs from the curvature. Racemes parallel, nodding, at length epinastically reflexed, slender, 4/5–1 in. long, 8–11-awned per pair, pale, loosely and finely greyish-villous, lower with a short, upper with a long (1–1 1/2 lin.) base, both slender except for the swollen epinastic cushions, pubescent in the fork, otherwise glabrous or with a few short or long hairs, very obliquely truncate and narrowly auricled; joints 5–6, filiform, subobliquely truncate, 1 1/2 lin. long, shortly ciliate, cilia white, 1/2 lin. long; pedicels similar, slightly longer. Homogamous pair of spikelets 1 at the base of the lower raceme only, or 0. Fertile spikelets linear-oblong, including the callus about 1 1/2 lin. long, pale or slightly tinged with pink; callus slender, subacute, 1/2– 3/4 lin. long. Glumes equal, chartaceous; lower minutely truncate, thin, almost membranous, more or less finely hairy (hairs white), dorsally flattened, margins narrowly involute and upwards inflexed, keels short, fine, scaberulous, nerves 9–11, of which 5 are intracarinal, evanescent below; upper glume membranous, 3-nerved, sparingly hairy above. Lower floret reduced to a broad-oblong truncate hyaline reversedly ciliate valve, 1 3/4 lin. long. Upper floret hermaphrodite: valve stipitiform, minutely 2-dentate, eciliate; awn 2 in. long, column dark-brown, fulvous-puberulous, bristle pale; valvule 0. Anthers 1 lin. long. Grain oblong, dorsally slightly compressed, 1 3/4 lin. long. Pedicelled spikelets ♂, lanceolate, acute, up to 3 1/2 lin. long, sparingly hairy or almost glabrous; lower glume 11-nerved with scabrid keels, upper as in the sessile spikelets; valves hyaline, upper narrowly cuneate, 1 lin. long, nerveless.
