Slender, flat-leaved, extravaginally branching, stoloniferous, tuft-forming perennial with rough patent spikelets on a short inflorescence. Leaf-sheath 2.5-5 cm, glabrous or retrorsely short hairy, thin, becoming fibrous below, sometimes reddened, margin hyaline. Auricles 0.1-0.5 mm, glabrous, barely clasping. Ligule 0.6-1.25 mm, lacerate. Collar dark brown or purpled, glabrous. Leaf-blade 6-25 cm × 0.5-3.5 mm, soft, flat, thin, adaxially ribs hirsute or minutely scabrid; margins smooth below, prickle-teeth above; abaxially with conspicuous white midrib and 2 white lateral ribs, evident prickle-teeth on ribs above. Culm 17-60 cm, slender, geniculate and decumbent below; nodes conspicuous, swollen, dark brown or almost black; internodes glabrous or antrorsely lanate immediately below inflorescence. Inflorescence a spike-like raceme 3-13 cm, subtended by a small hair-fringed bract; spikelets 4-13, imbricate; rachis internodes short, sulcate, antrorsely toothed on margins, elsewhere antrorsely lanate or glabrous. Spikelets 10-14 mm, of 4-6 florets on short (0.3 mm) hairy pedicels, broadside to tough rachis, becoming patent. Glumes unequal, narrowly or broadly triangular-acute, < spikelet, nerves 3-5, evident white, keels eccentric, abaxially irregularly prickle-toothed, adaxially clothed in short white stiff antrorse hairs, margin very narrowly chartaceous, toothed; lower 2.5-4 mm, upper 3.7-5.5 mm. Lemma 9-11 mm, indefinite canaliculate awn 1.5-4 mm, 5-nerved, keel obscure below, abaxially with abundant antrorse, ± appressed prickle-teeth, margin very narrowly chartaceous, toothed. Palea 5.3-7 mm; keels shortly denticulate; apex shallowly bifid, ciliate; interkeel with abundant short, white, stiff, antrorse hairs; flanks with short hairs at apex and along margin. Callus 0.25-0.4 mm, surrounded adaxially by short stiff hairs; disarticulation oblique. Rachilla 1.0-1.25 mm, with stiff appressed white hairs. Lodicules 0.4-0.6 mm, ciliate. Anthers 2.4-2.75 mm. Gynoecium: ovary 0.8-1 mm; stigma-styles 1.75-2 mm. Caryopsis 3.5-4 mm, linear; embryo 0.75 mm; hilum linear, 3.5-3.75 mm. 2n= 14.
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