Perennial from a stout rootstock. Culms fairly slender to robust, up to 2 m tall, 3–6 mm in diam., nodes purple, glabrous, or puberulous to tomentose with creamy hairs. Leaf sheaths glabrous or basal part above node pubescent, auricles to 6 mm at mouth; leaf blades linear, slightly glaucous or sometimes purplish, 40–60 × 0.7–1 cm, abaxial surface usually tomentose at sheath junction, otherwise glabrous, base gradually narrowed, apex filiform; ligule 1.5–4 mm. Spathate compound panicle narrow, erect, decompound, often purplish, ca. 50 cm or more, much branched, spathate compound clusters dense; spatheoles 1.2–2 cm; racemes 1.2–1.5(–2) cm; rachis internodes and pedicels ciliate on margins, hairs ca. 1.5 mm; pedicel of homogamous pair not swollen. Sessile spikelet elliptic-oblong, 4–5 × 0.9–1.2 mm; lower glume flat or shallowly concave below middle, occasionally puberulous in depression, often transversely wrinkled, sharply 2-keeled throughout, keels winged above middle, wings 0.1–0.3 mm wide, (2–)5(–7)-veined between keels; upper lemma awned; awn 0.8–1.1 cm. Pedicelled spikelet 3–5 mm. Fl. and fr. Sep–Nov. 2n = 60.
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