Compilation
Penicillaria compacta

Annual. Culms stout, probably several feet high, branched, terete or grooved on the side facing a branch, densely bearded at the nodes and sometimes pubescent towards them with tubercle-based hairs, pubescent to villous just below the inflorescence, otherwise glabrous and smooth. Leaf-sheaths usually shorter than the internodes, loose, terete, striate, hairy from tubercles towards the blade or all over, the hairs soon deciduous, usually bearded at the junction with the sheath, or almost glabrous and smooth; ligule reduced to a densely ciliate rim with hairs up to 2 lin. long; blade linear-lanceolate, abruptly contracted at the base, gradually tapering to a fine point, up to 2 ft. long, 8–17 lin. wide, flat, firm, green, loosely to densely hirsute with short tubercle-based hairs or glabrous, more or less scaberulous, scabrid on the cartilaginous margins, midrib stout, lateral nerves up to 9 on each side of the midrib. False spike dense, cylindric or slightly tapering upwards, 2–6 1/2 in. long, 7–11 lin. wide (exclusive of the bristles), yellowish, brown or slightly tinged with purple; rhachis stout, terete, villous, densely beset with the stalks of the persistent or deciduous involucres; involucres at length horizontally spreading, subsessile or with densely pilose stalks 1/2–2 lin. long; bristles up to 60 to each involucre, very slender, free to the base, the outer scaberulous, the inner (6–18) plumose or ciliate for two-thirds their length with tubercle-based hairs and with scaberulous tips, subequal and up to 4 1/2 lin. long or with one longer than the others and up to 6 lin. long, the outer mostly shorter. Spikelets solitary or in clusters of 2–3, minutely pedicelled, oblong or obliquely lanceolate- to ovate-oblong, slightly gibbous, 2 1/2–3 lin. long. Glumes oblate, truncate or very obtuse, hyaline, nerveless or the upper 1–3-nerved; lower up to 1/2 lin. long or suppressed; upper up to 3/4 lin. long. Lower floret ♂ or barren, rarely hermaphrodite: valve when flattened ovate- to elliptic-oblong, truncate or very obtuse, as long as the spikelet or more often a little shorter, mucronate, membranous, 3–5-nerved, minutely scaberulous towards and sometimes ciliolate at the apex, or much reduced in barren florets; valvule linear-lanceolate, minutely truncate, as long as the valve or slightly longer, appressedly pubescent, rarely glabrous, scaberulous or ciliolate on the keels, or suppressed. Upper floret hermaphrodite: valve when flattened ovate, obtuse, mucronate, as long as the spikelet, chartaceous, 5–7-nerved, smooth and shining on the back below the prominently nerved scaberulous tip, pubescent near the margins, rarely glabrous; valvule somewhat similar to that of the lower floret but firmer and glabrous or nearly so. Lodicules 0. Anthers 1 1/2–2 lin. long, with penicillate tips. Styles connate. Grain obovoid, 1 1/2–2 lin. long, tipped with pale greenish-grey, enclosed by or exposed between the gaping valve and valvule.