Perennial plants 45–90 cm high, usually glabrous, smooth and glaucous on culms and foliage; base thickened, hirsute or pubescent. Culms simple or branched, pruinose near nodes; nodes sometimes pubescent. Leaves: sheaths more than half as long as culm internodes; blade to 18 cm long, to 4.5 mm wide, with scabrous and vesicular indumentum along nerves. Panicles open or contracted, usually 2.5–17 cm long, 1–3 cm wide. Glumes 3.5–9 mm long, muticous or sometimes cuspidate, 9–11-nerved, smooth or sparsely scaberulous, glabrous. Florets exceeding glumes by 2–5 mm; lemma and palea finally divergent and recurved. Lemma 6–10 mm long, long-acuminate, mucronate to aristulate (awnlet to 1.8 mm long), cartilaginous or becoming membranous towards apex with hyaline margins, 5–7-nerved, bisulcate (sometimes obscurely), hirsute in lower 1/3–1/2 with hairs not exceeding apex, with upper part glabrous and scaberulous. Palea elongated into an entire or bifid beak to 1 mm long, muticous, scaberulous in upper part on surface and keels. Caryopsis 1.5–3 mm long.
A common, often dominant, component of grassland plains, gibber plains andclay pans, in grey, brown or black cracking clays and other heavy-textured soils.Favourable sites are usually low-lying, water-logged or seasonally flooded, andinclude waterholes, swamps, the channels and banks of watercourses, gilgais,and floodouts.
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