Tufts usually stiff, occasionally laxer with wide leaves, (10)-15-55 cm, with culms usually much overtopping leaves; branching intravaginal. Leaf-sheath firmly membranous, light green to light greyish brown, distinctly ribbed, smooth, or scabrid above near ligule, or scabrid throughout, or only basal sheaths scabrid, later shredding into fibres. Ligule 0.8-2.2 mm, truncate, erose to lacerate, abaxially smooth or scabrid. Leaf-blade 3.5-10-(17.5) cm × 1-2.5-(4) mm, usually flat, abaxially smooth or finely scabrid on ribs, very rarely densely scabrid throughout, adaxially finely scabrid, tip acute to acuminate. Culm erect or geniculate at base, internodes glabrous. Panicle (4)-5-12-(20) cm, narrowly branched, lanceolate, either contracted after flowering but > 5 mm wide, or remaining open; rachis smooth, branches and pedicels filiform, sparsely scabrid. Spikelets c. 3-3.5-(4) mm, green to brownish purple. Glumes ± equal, smooth, elliptic-lanceolate, acute, keel finely scabrid above, margins scabrid near tip. Lemma 2.3-3.3 mm, glabrous, 5-nerved, ovate-elliptic, truncate, minutely denticulate; awn 0, or rarely fine, straight, scabrid, to c. 2 mm, arising from midpoint to upper ⅓ of lemma, scarcely or not projecting beyond glumes. Palea 0.5-0.8 mm, ovate. Lodicules ≤ palea. Callus with small tuft of hairs or only a few minute hairs below each lemma margin. Anthers 0.6-1.2 mm. Caryopsis 1-1.8 × 0.3-0.5 mm. 2n= 42.
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