A coarse perennial, forming large dense tussocks, with thick tough roots; innovations intravaginal. Culms erect or nearly so, 3–4 1/2 ft. high, stout, rigid and woody, compressed, usually branched upwards with the branches erect, rarely simple, scaberulous and sometimes pubescent below the inflorescence, otherwise glabrous and smooth, up to 9- or more-noded, with the lower internodes usually short. Leaf-sheaths very smooth, glabrous or usually loosely bearded at the mouth, the lower long, strongly compressed and keeled, closely imbricate and flabellate, broad, pallid or brownish, coriaceous with scarious margins, the upper narrower; ligule reduced to a densely ciliate rim; blade narrowly linear to linear, gradually passing into the sheath or narrower than it at the base, very gradually tapering upwards to an oblique subacute tip, up to 1 1/4 ft. or more long and 2 1/2 lin. wide, tightly folded or opening out, rather rigid, tough, glaucous or green, glabrous, prominently and closely nerved, scaberulous on the midrib and margins towards the apex. False spike cylindric, straight or flexuous, dense, 4–10 in. long, 3–5 1/2 lin. wide (exclusive of the bristles), pale green or tinged with purple; rhachis angular, scaberulous, loosely beset with the minute subcupular stumps of the deciduous involucres; involucres erect or slightly spreading, each with a very minute peduncle; bristles 12–20 to each involucre, very slender, scaberulous, of unequal length, free to the base, one stouter than the others and up to 10 lin. long, the remainder shorter. Spikelets solitary, sessile within the involucre, lanceolate, acute, 3 1/4–4 1/2 lin. long, pale green, glabrous. Lower glume oblate to ovate or oblong, obtuse or acute, 1/4–1 1/4 lin. long, hyaline, nerveless or 1-nerved; upper narrowly ovate to elliptic, obtuse, 1 1/2–2 1/4 lin. long, thinly membranous, 1–3-nerved. Lower floret barren: valve when flattened oblong to broadly ovate-oblong, obtuse, as long as the spikelet, firmly membranous, 7–11-nerved; valvule very much reduced and up to 3/4 lin. long, or more often absent. Upper floret hermaphrodite, lanceolate, acute: valve when flattened oblong to ovate-oblong and subacute or obtuse, as long as the spikelet, firmly membranous, 5–7-nerved; valvule lanceolate, acute, nearly as long as the valve. Lodicules minute. Anthers 2–2 1/2 lin. long, with acute penicillate tips. Styles connate or free towards the apex.
