Tall, stout, often sprawling, flabellate tussock with numerous coloured cataphylls and extravaginal shoots, and persistent leaves and sheaths. Leaf-sheath to 15 cm, pinkish or purplish, chartaceous, entire, becoming fibrous, keeled, glabrous or with a few long hairs, apical tuft of hairs to 1 mm. Ligule to 0.7 mm. Leaf-blade to 75 cm × 8 mm, keeled, persistent, glabrous except for some short hairs above ligule and prickle-teeth on margins and abaxially at apex. Culm to 1.5 m, internodes glabrous. Inflorescence to 30 cm, clavate, dense and compact, not naked below; rachis smooth below, branches and pedicels densely scabrid and with some long hairs at branch axils. Spikelets of up to 4 distant florets. Glumes to 7 mm, broad, shallowly bifid, sometimes purpled, margins ciliate, prickle-teeth adaxially above, < nearest lemma lobes; lower 3-nerved, upper 5-nerved. Lemma to 6 mm; hairs dense on margin, usually fewer or none aside central nerve, rarely reaching sinus, prickle-teeth above adaxially and abaxially on nerves; lateral lobes up to 2.5 mm, conspicuously awned adjacent to a small lobe; central awn to 16 mm, reflexed, column absent. Palea to 6 mm, interkeel with prickle-teeth above. Callus to 1.5 mm, hairs to 4 mm. Rachilla to 0.25 mm. Lodicules to 1 mm. Anthers to 4 mm. Gynoecium: ovary to 1 mm; stigma-styles to 3 mm. Caryopsis to 3 mm. 2n= 42.
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