Culms to 9 m, ca. 5 cm in diam., basally slightly flexuose, apically slightly drooping; internodes ca. 25 cm, glabrous; wall thick; nodes toward base with a ring of gray-white to pale brown silky hairs below and above sheath scar; sheath scar with a persistent ring of stiff, brown hairs; branching to base. Branches at lower nodes usually with branchlets specialized into tough or weak thorns; from mid-culm nodes upward usually many and clustered with central 3 dominant. Culm sheaths somewhat persistent, ribbed-striate when dry, mostly glabrous, pubescent only below blade, apex asymmetrically triangular; auricles unequal, narrowly linear and extremely decurrent, small, slightly wrinkled, margin with both long and short setae 1–3 mm; ligule 1–2 mm, sparsely dentate or shortly fimbriate; blade erect, narrowly triangular, with stiff, brown hairs at joint with sheath, base nearly 1/2 as wide as sheath apex. Leaf blade lanceolate to narrowly lanceolate, 6–9 × 1.1–1.5 cm, abaxially subglabrous, adaxially glabrous. Inflorescence unknown.