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False panicle 30–50 cm long, lax, leafy; spatheoles 3–5 cm long, narrowly lanceolate, glabrous or sparsely pilose; peduncles about as long as the spatheoles, barbate all round with yellow bulbous-based hairs, ± straight; racemes 1.5–1.8 cm long, 2-awned per pair (rarely 3-awned but not in the Flora Zambesiaca area), terminally or subterminally exserted, deflexed; raceme-bases subequal, the superior 1–1.5 mm long, flattened, stiffly setose with fulvous bulbous-based bristles, the apex produced into an oblong or narrowly oblong appendage 0.5–4 mm long.
Sessile spikelets 7.5–11 mm long; callus 2–3 mm long, pungent; inferior glume linear-oblong, often shallowly hollowed on the back, ± pubescent; awn 6.5–8.5(10.5) cm long, the column pubescent with pale or rufous hairs 0.2–0.6 mm long.
Leaf sheaths glabrous, or pubescent along the margins; leaf laminas up to 60 cm × 15 mm, glabrous or sometimes pubescent beneath, narrowed to the midrib at the base and sometimes falsely petiolate.
Pedicelled spikelets 8–13 mm long, linear-lanceolate, glabrous, terminating in a slender bristle 2–10 mm long; callus scarcely developed; pedicel-tooth obscure.
Homogamous spikelets 9–11 mm long, a single pair at the base of the inferior raceme only, glabrous, awnless.
Annual; culms up to 200 cm high, glabrous, supported by stilt roots.
Culms 1–2 m. high
