Densely caespitose perennial without rhizomes or stolons; culms stout, up to 200 cm tall, erect, usually unbranched, glabrous at the nodes, eglandular; basal leaf sheaths glabrous, firmly chartaceous, glossy yellow, terete, eglandular, persistent or decaying into parallel fibres; ligule a line of hairs; leaf laminas 15–40(60) cm × 6–12(15) mm, linear, rigid and pungent, flat (involute on drying), glabrous or sparsely pilose, eglandular.Panicle 15–70 cm long, narrowly oblong-elliptic, rather dense and usually contracted, the spikelets evenly distributed on pedicels 2–6 mm long, the primary branches 1–several at a node but scarcely whorled, terminating in a fertile spikelet, glabrous in the axils, eglandular.Spikelets 3–7 × 2–2.5 mm, oblong to lanceolate-oblong, laterally compressed, 5–7(12)-flowered, the florets disarticulating from below upwards, the rhachilla persistent; glumes unequal, keeled, narrowly lanceolate in profile, densely scaberulous all over, acute at the apex, the inferior 1–1.5 mm long, reaching to c. 2/3 the way along the adjacent lemma, the superior 1.6–2(2.3) mm long, reaching to about the middle of the adjacent lemma; lemmas 2.3–2.8 mm long, keeled, narrowly elliptic to lanceolate-elliptic in profile, firmly membranous with somewhat indistinct lateral nerves, diverging from the rhachilla at 45°, those in opposite rows not imbricate, the rhachilla visible between them, greyish-green, densely scaberulous all over, subacute to acute at the apex; palea deciduous with or soon after the lemma, scaberulous on the flanks, the keels slender, wingless, scabrid; anthers 3, 1.3–1.5 mm long.Caryopsis 0.7–1 mm long, oblong-elliptic, dorsally grooved.
