Perennial with intravaginal innovations. Culms erect, up to 3–5 ft. high, moderately stout, simple or branched from the lowest node, up to 5-noded, tomentose at the base, with a ring of silky hairs at the insertion of the sheaths and more or less pilose below, uppermost internode (peduncle) up to 1 3/4 ft. long, prominently striate, tuberculate and hairy towards the inflorescence. Leaf-sheaths striate, firm, with the margins densely ciliate, tuberculate and deciduously hairy in the upper part, the lower and intermediate moderately loose and keeled upwards, the upper tight; ligule very short, long and densely ciliate; blade linear from a slightly narrowed base, tapering to a long fine point, flat, up to 1 1/2 ft. or more long by 4–5 1/2 lin. wide, somewhat glaucous, glabrous, rough along the margins and on the back, midrib slender, markedly and bluntly prominent on the back below, primary lateral nerves 5 on each side, about 1/2 lin. distant at the middle. Inflorescence a more or less loose and interrupted, blunt, false spike, 5 1/2 in. long by 4–4 1/2 lin. wide (exclusive of the bristles); axis angular, densely pubescent and more or less hairy with scattered long hairs; branches very short, puberulous, forming compact clusters of up to 5 usually perfect spikelets; bristles slender, flexuous, 2–4 with each spikelet, unequal, 3–9 lin. long, pale straw-coloured throughout or with purplish tips; pedicels reduced to short stumps with discoid tips. Spikelets very turgid, almost semi-orbicular in profile, elliptic in back view, up to 1 3/4 lin. long and up to 1 1/2 lin. wide in profile, glabrous and smooth, pale with deep purplish tips. Glumes membranous; lower rotundate-elliptic, rounded at the tip, 6–7-nerved, one-third to nearly half the length of the spikelet; upper broadly elliptic, blunt, apiculate, 7-nerved, slightly more than half the length of the upper floret. Lower floret ♂: valve similar to the upper glume but larger and as long as the spikelet, 5-nerved; valvule obovate-oblong, nearly as long as the valve, keels narrowly marginate. Upper floret hermaphrodite: valve slightly shorter than or as long as the lower, elliptic and apiculate in back view, very broadly semi-ovate in profile, pale with dark purple tip, delicately longitudinally striate and punctate and slightly transversely wrinkled; valvule narrow as seen between the parallel involute margins of the valve.
