Compilation
Pennisetum asperifolium

A densely tufted perennial; innovations intravaginal. Culms erect or ascending from a geniculate base, 3/4–3 ft. high, slender, terete, rather rigid, simple or branched below, 3–8-noded, scabrid and sometimes minutely pubescent just below the inflorescence, otherwise glabrous and smooth. Leaf-sheaths as long as or longer than the internodes, terete or slightly keeled towards the blade, firm, tight, ciliate on the margins and usually loosely bearded at the mouth or glabrous and smooth, the basal persistent, becoming coriaceous; ligule reduced to a ciliate rim; blade narrowly linear, narrower than the sheath at the base, tapering to a fine point, up to 1 ft. or more long, convolute, folded or flat and up to 1 3/4 lin. wide, erect, rigid, tough, prominently nerved, glaucous, glabrous or with a few hairs towards the mouth, very scabrid on the margins and usually above, smooth below. False spike moderately dense, plumose, erect or slightly nodding, 4–9 in. (or more) long, 6–8 lin. wide (exclusive of the bristles), pallid or purplish; rhachis striate, loosely pubescent or pilose, scaberulous, loosely beset with the very minute stumps of the deciduous involucres; involucres at length spreading, each with a villous stalk up to 1 1/2 lin. long; bristles up to 25 to each involucre, slender, free to the base, usually straight, loosely plumose around the spikelet with long white tubercle-based hairs, scaberulous above, or the outer entirely scaberulous, of unequal length, one usually stouter than the rest and 8–20 lin. long, the others shorter, varying in length and up to 13 lin. long. Spikelets in clusters of 1–3, one subsessile, the others if present pedicelled with the pedicel up to 3/4 lin. long, lanceolate, finely acute, 2 1/4–3 1/4 lin. long, glabrous or minutely bearded at the base. Lower glume a hyaline obtuse scale up to 1/2 lin. long or suppressed; upper lanceolate or narrowly ovate, acute or slightly acuminate, usually mucronate, up to 2 1/2 lin. long, membranous, 1-nerved, asperulous, or similar to the lower. Lower floret barren or rarely ♂: valve when flattened lanceolate, ovate or ovate-oblong, finely acute and mucronate or shortly aristate, 2–3 lin. long, membranous, 1–3 (rarely 5) -nerved, scaberulous on the nerves; valvule suppressed or lanceolate, nearly as long as the valve, keels scaberulous. Upper floret hermaphrodite or ♂ in the lateral spikelets of a cluster, lanceolate, acute: valve when flattened ovate-oblong or oblong, acute, as long as the spikelet, mucronate with the mucro up to 1/2 lin. long, membranous, usually 5-nerved, scaberulous at the apex and rarely with the upper margins ciliolate; valvule slightly shorter than the valve. Lodicules very minute. Anthers 1 1/4–1 3/4 lin. long, with glabrous tips. Styles connate or free for half their length. Grain obovate-oblong, nearly 1 1/4 lin. long.