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Tufted perennial 500-2000 mm high. Leaf blade to 300 x 4-6 mm. Inflorescence narrow; spatheoles linear, green to purplish; homogamous spikelet pairs 1 at base of lower raceme, usually olive-green. Sessile spikelet 6.5-12.0 mm long, dark brown; upper glume awn 6-18 mm long; upper lemma awn 30-50 mm long; callus pungent; anther up to 4 mm long. Pedicellate spikelet 6-10, ± as long as sessile spikelet; anthers as long as sessile ones.
Sessile spikelets (7)9–10(12) mm long (including the callus); callus 2.5–3.5(4.5) mm long, slender, pungent, white-pubescent; superior glume with a slender awn 8–18 mm long; superior lemma 5–6 mm long, bilobed almost to the middle; awn (2.5)3–5 cm long, the column thinly and shortly pubescent with white hairs.
Leaf sheaths glabrous or sparsely pilose; ligules 1–1.5 mm long, ciliate; leaf laminas up to 30 cm × 6 mm, rigid, glaucous, glabrescent, those on the tillers much shorter (c. 5 cm) and silvery-villous.
Panicle scanty, narrow, rarely reduced to a single pair of racemes; spatheoles linear, 7.5–10 cm long, green or purplish, glabrous or rarely sparsely hirsute; peduncle glabrous or rarely pubescent.
Racemes 4–5.5 cm long, c. 12(18)-awned per pair, slender, loose; raceme-bases pubescent where they meet, the inferior very short, the superior 3–4 mm long.
Homogamous spikelet-pairs 1 at the base of the inferior raceme (rarely of both racemes), c. 7 mm long, similar to the pedicelled spikelets.
Pedicelled spikelets 6–10 mm long (excluding the callus), white-villous, acute; callus 2–3 mm long.
Densely caespitose perennial; culms 100–200 cm high, up to 4 mm in diameter.
Tufted perennial 1–2 m. high
