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Perennial, c. 50 cm. high, caespitose, with well-developed rhizomes, bearing fascicles of culms. Culms erect, slender, simple, glabrous, smooth, with a very long uppermost internode, 1-2-noded; nodes glabrous, smooth. Leaf-sheaths glabrous, smooth, usually shorter than the internodes. Ligule an obsolete minutely ciliolate rim; auricles of the innovations usually long-barbate, those of the culm-leaves dark-coloured, usually glabrescent; collar glabrous or minutely pubescent. Leaf-laminae 10 x 0·1-0·2 cm., flat, acuminate, scabrous or hirtellous above, glabrous, smooth beneath, those of the innovations short, convolute, setaceous, acute. Panicle 5-12 cm. long (excluding awns), lax, with glabrous, smooth rhachis and branches; branches 2-nate, terete, the lower being 4 cm. long, naked in the lower 1/2, few-flowered, the upper bearing 1-2 spikelets on long filiform, smooth pedicels. Glumes unequal, 1-nerved, glabrous, smooth, acuminate, smooth on the keels, the inferior 8-8·5 mm. long; the superior 10-11 mm. long. Lemma 6·5-7·5 mm. long, glabrous, smooth in the lower part, with rows of minute scabridules towards the apex, having sometimes 1-2 additional awn-like or setiform appendages; callus 0·5 mm. long, obtuse or nearly truncate, shortly barbate; beak or column absent; awns subequal, scaberulous, at first erect, soon divaricately deflexed, the central one 3-3·5 cm. long, more strongly deflexed than the lateral ones which are 2·5-3·0 cm. long; articulation absent.