Information

Tussocky perennial up to 200 cm tall; culms erect from a ± oblique rhizome up to 1.2 cm in diameter; basal leaf sheaths lanose-tomentose with brownish hairs, strongly striate towards the base and ultimately breaking up into stiffly curling fibres from the bottom; leaf lamina flat or rarely convolute, up to 120 × 2 cm, narrowing to a hooded tip, glabrous or loosely pilose.Panicle 20–35(42) cm long, oblong or lanceolate, dense, the branches ascending to suberect, the terminal pedicels up to 26 mm long.Spikelets (15)20–26 mm long, linear to oblong-lanceolate, purple or green tinged with purple; glumes ovate-lanceolate to elliptic, 5-nerved, pilose in the upper half, the inferior 7–10 mm long, the superior 9–14 mm long; lowermost floret male, the lemma (11)13–15 mm long including the awn; fertile lemmas 14–16 mm long including the aristate lobes, ovate to broadly elliptic; central awn 13–15(18) mm long.