Perennial plants 10–80 cm high, sometimes glaucous; base knotty or thickened, pubescent or woolly. Culms usually branched, glabrous or villous or woolly; nodes glabrous or bearded. Leaves tuberculate or scabrous or smooth, hispid with simple or tubercle-based hairs or glabrous; sheaths from less than half as long to longer than culm internodes; blade to 5 (–20) cm long, to 1.75 mm wide. Panicles usually open, 3–8 cm long, 0.5–1 cm wide. Glumes equal to florets or often less than 1.5 mm shorter than florets, 4–7 mm long, with mucro to 0.6 mm long, 11–13-nerved, smooth or sometimes scaberulous, glabrous or rarely pilose. Callus entirely bearded. Lemma 5.8–7 mm long, acute, mucronate, membranous with broad hyaline glabrous margins, usually 5-nerved, not grooved, hirsute in lower 1/2–2/3, with hairs almost reaching lemma apex, smooth or scabrous to tuberculate above. Palea entire or bicuspidate, indumentum similar to lemma. Caryopsis c. 2 mm long.
Xerophyticforms predominate in skeletal and shallow soils on rocky or gibber slopes and crestsof hills, ridges, plateaux, mesas, rises and tablelands of sandstone,quartzite, laterite, granite and calcareous rocks, often occupying sandypockets, gullies, crevices and beds of seasonal creeks and drainage lines.Mesophytic forms occur on deeper finer-textured sands, sandy and clayey loams,and red earth soils in flat to gently undulating country and outwash plains.
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