Coarse perennial tussock grass from a short ascending rhizome.. Culms 40–130 cm. high, robust, erect, fasciculately branching to form thick bunches of whitish overlapping leaf-sheaths at the lower nodes.. Leaf-blades tightly folded, 20–45 cm. long, 4–7 mm. wide, pale green, tough, glabrous, the margins firm and conspicuously scabrid, tapering to a fine tip; ligule 0.15–0.25 mm. long, a yellow-brown rim with a contrasting white ciliate fringe.. Inflorescence composed of 2–13 spikes clustered towards the top of the culm, the upper spikes often subdigitate; spikes 4–17 cm. long, slender, loosely ascending to horizontally spreading.. Spikelets 3–9-flowered, narrowly oblong, 6–10 mm. long, dark olive-grey; glumes 1-nerved, the lower narrowly lanceolate in profile, 2–2.8 mm. long, subacute, the upper narrowly lanceolate-oblong in profile, 3.1–4.5 mm. long, acute or subacute; lemmas narrowly oblong in profile, 3.6–5.2 mm. long, glabrous or obscurely appressed pilose along the margins, minutely scabrid towards the subacute tip.. Grain elliptic-oblong, 1.6–1.7 mm. long, flat on the hilar side, minutely and closely rugulose.. Fig. 72.
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