Perennial. Culms very stout, up to nearly 3 lin. thick. Leaf-sheaths tight, slightly rough, finely striate, glabrous; ligules membranous, truncate, over 1 lin. long, glabrous; blades linear, tapering almost from the base, up to 1 1/2 ft. long, about 5 lin. wide at the base, very firm, more or less rough above, less so below, very scabrid along the edges. Racemes about 10 on a common axis, which is about 3 in. long and more or less angular above and slightly rough, lowest raceme solitary, the following verticillate or opposite, all peduncled (peduncles 1 1/2– 3/4 in. long and with a few hairs at the base), stiff, erect, over 1 1/2 ft. long, and about 1 lin. in diam., glabrous, dull purplish; joints linear, slightly thickened above, semiterete, very slightly concave on the inner face, prominently many-nerved, rough on the back, outer angle scabrid, disarticulating obliquely, scar surrounded by a coriaceous ciliolate irregularly toothed appendage; pedicels linear, similar to and almost contiguous with the joints but more compressed and shorter, indistinctly nerved and without appendages. Sessile spikelet with a short obovate minutely bearded callus, which is hardly marked off from the lower glume, 3–3 1/2 lin. long, linear-oblong. Glumes subequal, coriaceous, very minutely truncate, rather flat on the back, with keels spinulously ciliate above the middle, 6-nerved, intracarinal nerves 2, one or both of them slightly raised and scaberulous upwards; upper glume chartaceous, almost as long as the lower, narrowly boat-shaped, acute, 3-nerved, keel rigidly ciliolate above, lateral nerves submarginal, margin hyaline and ciliate. Lower floret: valve lanceolate from a broad base, subacute, almost 3 lin. long, hyaline, ciliolate, with a similar 2-nerved, almost glabrous valvule. Upper floret: valve similar to that of the lower floret, but firmer below, more or less boat-shaped and 3-nerved, its valvule of the same length, somewhat obtuse, faintly 2-nerved. Anthers up to 1 1/2 lin. long. Pedicelled spikelets similar to the sessile, but both florets usually ♂, the lower glume produced into a squarrose scabrid awn, 3/4 in. long.
