Robust often sprawling tussock-forming perennials. Culms 80–150 cm high. Leaves hairy or mostly glabrous; sheaths overlapping or not; ligule 0.1–0.2 mm long; blade usually flat, flexuose or curly with age, to 30 cm long, to 8 mm wide. Panicles spiciform (rarely loose to open), often interrupted, 11–45 cm long, 1–3 (–6.5) cm wide; branches usually loosely appressed, divided, entirely spikeletbearing. Spikelets clustered, subsessile (very shortly pedicellate), lanceolate, 5–15 mm long, 1.5–2.2 mm wide, often glaucous; rachilla flexuose, thick; florets 9–34, closely overlapping. Glumes unequal, lanceolate, cartilaginous to indurated; lower glume 1–1.5 mm long; upper glume 1.5–2 mm long. Lemma lanceolate, 1.5–2.3 mm long, acute or acuminate, cartilaginous to indurated, 3-nerved. Palea 3/4 length of lemma; body spathulate; keels scaberulous; flaps distinctly narrower than body. Stamens 3; anthers 0.2–0.4 mm long. Grain laterally compressed, elliptic or almost globose, 0.4–0.7 mm long, white-striate when young, finally honey-brown and ±wrinkled.
Often in low-lying,alluvial habitats (lagoons, small streams, swamps, lakes, drainage channels, waterfalls);usually in sandy or loam soils associated with sandstone, quartzite, granite orlaterite.
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