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Caespitose perennial with short oblique rhizome; culms up to 60(85) cm tall, erect or ascending, usually unbranched but sometimes branched below, glabrous at the nodes, often with an annular gland below the nodes; basal leaf sheaths glabrous or thinly pilose, chartaceous, terete, with scattered glandular pits, persistent; ligule a line of hairs; leaf laminas (2.5)5–15(20) cm × (1)2–5 mm, linear, flat or involute, glabrous or scattered-pilose (the upper surface also asperulous), with or without glandular pits in the nerves beneath.Panicle 4–19 cm long, lanceolate to narrowly ovate, the spikelets densely clustered on very short pedicels on stubby side branches, the primary branches not in whorls, terminating in a fertile spikelet, glabrous in the axils, the rhachis with an annular gland beneath each branch and the branches with crateriform glands.Spikelets 3–4 × 2.5–3 mm, ovate to oblong-ovate, strongly laterally compressed, 6–12(14)-flowered, the florets disarticulating from the apex downwards, the rhachilla fragile; glumes subequal, 1.5–2 mm long, reaching to and sometimes exceeding the apex of the adjacent lemmas, keeled, lanceolate in profile, glabrous on the flanks, gland-dotted on the nerves, acuminate at the apex; lemmas c. 2 mm long, keeled, ovate in profile, membranous with prominent lateral nerves, diverging from the rhachilla at a wide angle but those in opposite rows imbricate and concealing the rhachilla, greyish-green, sometimes tinged with purple, glabrous on the flanks, gland-dotted on the keel and lateral nerves, subacute at the apex; palea glabrous on the flanks, the keels slender, scabrid above, broadly winged in the lower half, the upper margin of the wing sometimes truncate but usually concave (the wing thus auriculate); anthers 3, c. 0.6 mm long.Caryopsis c. 1 mm long, elliptic to oblong-elliptic.