Perennial, aquatic. Culms creeping and rooting from nodes at base, sometimes floating, up to 30 m long, ca. 1 cm in diam., flowering stems up to 2 m tall, more than 10-noded. Leaf sheaths smooth, glabrous or upper sheaths tuberculate-hispid; leaf blades narrowly to broadly linear, up to 100 × (0.3–)1–2.5 cm, hispid with tubercle-based hairs on both surfaces or almost glabrous, midvein stout, base rounded, margins scabrous, apex slenderly acuminate; ligule ca. 1 mm, margin ciliate. Male raceme 2.5–7 cm, drooping, spikelets mostly in triads, closely imbricate; utricle ovoid, longer than broad, bony, shiny, 10–14 × 5–7 mm, white or pale brown, sometimes with a median transverse line, apex occasionally extended into a green blade. Male spikelets broadly elliptic, 8–12 mm; glumes many-veined, lower glume winged on keels, wing (0.4–)0.7–1.2(–1.5) mm wide, margin ciliolate; anthers 4–5.5 mm. Fl. and fr. Aug–Nov. 2n = 10, 20, 40.
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A large grass with thick stems that keeps growing from year to year. The stems can be floating or creeping. When in water there are floating swollen roots. The upper surface of the leaves has glands and these have bristle-like hairs.
It is a tropical plant. It can tolerate prolonged flooding. It grows in lakes, streams and open water between 500-1,800 m above sea level in southern China. In Yunnan.
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