Perennial, scrambling from an often decumbent rooting base, up to over 6 ft. high. Culms many-noded, much geniculate, branched below and here and there also upwards, terete, hard and more or less woody below, glabrous and very smooth; internodes shorter or longer than the sheaths. Leaf-sheaths tight, rather firm, terete, finely striate, quite smooth and glabrous except along the upwards ciliolate margins (African specimens) or sometimes hirsute with tubercle-based finally deciduous hairs, at length circumscissile at the base and deciduous; ligule a very obscure membranous rim; blades linear-lanceolate to lanceolate from a suddenly much constricted almost petioloid base and finally disarticulating there, acuminate with a subsetaceous point, 3–6 in. by 4 1/2–10 lin., flat, firmly papery, dark and often dull green, minutely puberulous at the constricted base, otherwise quite glabrous, rough near the tips, sharply serrulate-scabrid along the margins, midrib slender, prominent below, primary lateral nerves very slender, 4–5 on each side with very faint oblique and sometimes meandering transverse veins and pellucid dots or striæ (lacunæ in the parenchyma). Panicle terminal, erect, slightly flexuous, more or less exserted from the uppermost sheath or its base enclosed in it, 5–9 in. long, contracted and subfastigiate or widely open; common axis angular, smooth, lower internodes 3/4 to over 1 1/2 in. long, the following often irregularly decreasing; primary branches frequently 2-nate to pseudoverticillate or, particularly upwards, solitary, erect or spreading at an angle of 60° or more, up to three-quarters the length of the panicle, filiform, angular, scabrid, divided from the base but with the lowest divisions often quite rudimentary, the next often remote (in large panicles up to 2 in. from the base), the following usually irregularly distant or approximate, representing short racemes or fascicles, rarely long and again branched. Racemes sessile, up to 10-spiculate and over 3 lin. long, but mostly much shorter and often reduced to clusters of 6–3-spikelets; rhachis finely filiform, wavy, scabrid; pedicels very fine with discoid tips, scaberulous, 1/2–1 lin., or sometimes up to 2 lin. long and then flexuous. Spikelets ovate-anceolate to linear-oblong, acute or acuminate, 1 1/2–1 3/4 lin. long, quite glabrous (in the African specimens). Glumes similar, ovate to ovate-anceolate, acute, lower one-third to two-fifths the length of the spikelet, 3-nerved; upper slightly longer, 5- (rarely 7-) nerved. Lower floret: valve 7-nerved, nerves distinct. Upper floret hermaphrodite, pale, smooth; anthers 1 mm. long. Grain oblong-elliptic, obtuse, sides slightly thickened.
