Perennial; innovations extravaginal, their buds clothed with appressedly hairy coriaceous cataphylls. Culms erect or slightly geniculate, up to 6 ft. high, stout, terete, branched from the upper nodes with the branches flowering, up to 8-noded, scaberulous just below the inflorescence, otherwise glabrous and smooth. Leaf-sheaths shorter than the internodes, loose, keeled towards the blade, striate, smooth, glabrous or ciliate on the margins and loosely bearded at the mouth; ligule very short, truncate, ciliate; blade linear, narrowed at the base and tapering to an acute tip, up to 1 1/2 ft. long, 2–8 lin. wide, flat, firm, green, loosely hirsute above with short tubercle-based hairs or glabrous, scaberulous. False spike dense, cylindric, flexuous or straight, 5–7 1/2 in. long, 3–4 lin. wide (exclusive of the bristles), purplish, purplish-brown or orange-brown; rhachis angular, minutely scaberulous on the angles, densely beset with the scars of the deciduous involucres; involucres subsessile, at length horizontally spreading or reflexed, minutely bearded at the base; bristles up to 25 to each involucre, very slender, free to the base, scaberulous, rarely with a few short hairs, of unequal length, one stouter than the rest and up to 13 lin. long, the remainder of varying lengths and up to 6 lin. long. Spikelets solitary, sessile within the involucre, lanceolate-oblong or oblong, 1 3/4–2 1/4 lin. long, glabrous, pale brown, Lower glume lanceolate, obtuse or acute, up to 3/4 lin. long, hyaline, nerveless or 1-nerved, or suppressed; upper when flattened ovate-oblong, abruptly acute, as long as the spikelet, thinly membranous, finely 5–7 (rarely 9) -nerved, minutely puberulous upwards. Lower floret ♂: valve when flattened broadly oblong, 1 1/2–1 3/4 lin. long, shortly 3-lobed with the lobes obtuse or acute, of equal length or the middle lobe longest, thinly membranous, finely 5–7-nerved, minutely puberulous above the middle; valvule linear, subequal to the valve, keels sparsely ciliolate or scaberulous. Upper floret hermaphrodite, lanceolate, obtuse: valve when flattened broadly ovate, truncate, 1–1 1/4 lin. long, chartaceous, smooth and glossy, obscurely 5-nerved, ciliolate at the apex; valvule somewhat similar to the valve. Lodicules 0. Anthers 1 lin. long, with glabrous tips. Styles free. Grain elliptic-oblong, 1/2 lin. long.
