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Densely caespitose perennial up to 80 cm tall; base of culm bulbous with the outer leaf sheaths ultimately breaking up into fibres, exposing the inner ones which are densely tomentose with dirty white hairs; leaf lamina flat or becoming involute, 7–45 cm × 3–6(8) mm, pungent, glabrous or loosely pilose above.Panicle 13–14.5 cm long, broadly ovate, the branches spreading or ascending, scaberulous, the terminal pedicels up to 8 mm long.Spikelets 6–7(12) mm long, oblong, straw-coloured, often tinged with purple; glumes ovate-lanceolate, 3-nerved, the inferior 3–5 mm long, the superior 3.5–6 mm long; lowermost floret male with rudimentary ovary, the lemma c. 5 mm long, 2-lobed with an awn in the sinus, the awn either short and straight or long and reflexed and rarely twisted below (these two sorts mixed in the same panicle); fertile lemmas 4–6 mm long including the aristate lobes, ovate-lanceolate; central awn 4.5–9 mm long.