Perennial plants 53–105 cm high, glabrous and smooth on culms and foliage; base thickened, glossy, usually glabrous. Culms usually simple, glaucous; nodes glabrous. Leaves: sheaths much shorter than culm internodes; blade to 25 cm long, to 1.5 mm wide. Panicles open, 5.5–13 cm long, 1.5–3 cm wide. Glumes 6–10 mm long, aristulate or awn-like, faintly 11–13-nerved, smooth, glabrous. Florets equal to or exceeding glumes; lemma and palea divergent. Lemma 5–8 mm long, acuminate, awned, cartilaginous, faintly 7-nerved, bisulcate, hirsute or pilose on back and ciliate on margins in lower 1/3–3/4 (sometimes entirely), glabrous and smooth or scaberulous above; awn 4–10 mm long, often recurved. Palea 6.5–8 mm long, long-acuminate into beak, notched or bifid for up to 1 mm, sparsely pilose or hirsute in lower 1/2–2/3, glabrous above or scabrous-pubescent near apex. Caryopsis c. 2.5 mm long.
A dominant plant in or near seasonal or permanentwatercourses and similar moist sites, often in sand, alluvium or running water,and in association with rocks of basalt, sandstone, quartzite and limestone.
Home