perennial (sometimes flowering the first year?), tufted; innovation shoots intravaginal; rhizome short, sometimes very stout; culms erect or geniculate, robust, usually tall, up to 10 ft. long, compressed below, glabrous or the lower part more or less hirsute, usually 3–6-noded, subsimple or more or less branched, branches erect, upper internodes exserted; leaves glabrous or softly hairy or coarsely hirsute with tubercle-based hairs; sheaths rather firm, the lower compressed, striate, nodes glabrous, pubescent or bearded; ligules membranous, very short, ciliate and often with a dense beard behind; blades linear to lanceolate-linear from a contracted and rounded or attenuate base, long tapering to a fine (sometimes convolute and filiform) point, 1/2–2 ft. by 2–8 lin., rarely broader; flat, minutely tomentose at the junction with the blade, midrib rather stout, whitish; panicle erect or nodding, contracted or effuse and lax, decompound, from 1/2 to over 1 ft. long; axis slender, angular, glabrous, smooth or scaberulous above; lower branches whorled, suberect or spreading, rather distant, up to 6 in. long, divided almost from the base, or undivided for 1–2 1/2 in., filiform, scaberulous above, smooth below, glabrous except at the often minutely tomentose or pubescent callous base; pedicels fascicled, 3–2-nate or the upper solitary, very unequal, very short to several times longer than the spikelet, capillary, flexuous, scabrid; spikelets oblong, subobtuse or obtuse, somewhat turgid, 1 1/4–1 1/2 lin. long, light green, sometimes tinged with purple, glabrous, rarely puberulous; lower glume rounded, 1/3– 3/8 lin. long, subhyaline, faintly 3-nerved to nerveless, upper oblong, acute or obtuse, 1 1/4–1 1/2 lin. long, membranous, 5-nerved; lower floret ♂, valve very similar to and very slightly shorter than the upper glume; pale oblong, obtuse; hermaphrodite floret equalling the ♂ or scarcely shorter, oblong, obtuse; valve 5-nerved, finely transversely rugose; anthers 1/2– 3/4 lin. long; grain over 1/2 lin. long. null
