Short-lived perennial plants 60–125 cm high, often glaucous or pruinose. Culms simple or sometimes branched, usually glabrous, often purple; nodes bearded or tuberculate-bearded or pubescent, rarely glabrous. Leaves glabrous or hirsute to pilose; sheaths more than half as long as culm internodes; blade to 35 cm long, to 5 mm wide, smooth or scaberulous or sometimes vesicular. Panicles loose to open, drooping, 10.5–19 cm long, 1–6 cm wide. Glumes 4.3–10 mm long, mucronate to aristulate (awnlet to 1.5 (–4) mm long), obscurely 9–13-nerved, glabrous and smooth or sometimes hirsute with tubercle-based hairs, scabrous towards apex on margins. Florets (excluding awns) shorter than to exceeding glumes by 1–2.5 mm. Lemma 5–7 mm long, awned, cartilaginous, 5–7-nerved, bisulcate, hirsute or pilose in lower 1/3–1/2 with simple hairs that do not exceed lemma apex, glabrous and smooth above, scaberulous on margins near apex; awn 10–27 mm long, usually recurved or flexuose. Palea 6–8.5 mm long, acuminate into entire or bicuspidulate beak, hirsute or pilose in lower 1/2–2/3 near keels, glabrous above (sometimes mostly glabrous), scabrous near apex. Caryopsis 2–2.8 mm long.
A characteristic species of the seasonally inundated, heavy clayflood plains, which occur extensively in N.T. north of 14°S. Other recordedhabitats include the margins of swamps and lagoons, alluvial floodouts, seepageareas and drainage depressions.
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