Very variable, coarse, light green to greenish brown to bluish green perennial tufts to c. 70 cm, with stiff erect leaves < stems, or often scrambling and trailing to 2 m, with hanging leaves and stems drooping from thick stolons, rooting at nodes below tufts; branching extravaginal, with up to three, short, glabrous, obtuse, bract-like sheaths at base; leaf-blades persistent. Leaf-sheath light green to light brown, coriaceous, folded and strongly keeled, lateral ribs conspicuous, smooth or slightly scabrid above, rarely minutely scabrid throughout. Ligule c. 0.5 mm, a truncate usually long-ciliate rim, scabrid abaxially. Leaf-blade coriaceous, folded to flat, abaxially with prominent, thickened midrib, and numerous, distinct lateral ribs, smooth apart from prickle-teeth near tip, adaxially smooth between inconspicuous ribs; margins thickened, tip acuminate or abruptly acute, often pungent, scabrid. Culm often not far exserted beyond uppermost leaf-sheath, internodes glabrous. Panicle much-branched, branches whorled, very slender; rachis and primary branches often smooth, secondary branchlets finely, sharply, densely or sparsely scabrid or smooth, often spikelet-bearing ± throughout. Spikelets numerous, light green. Glumes subequal, narrow-to elliptic-lanceolate, acute to subobtuse, occasionally smooth throughout, or upper ⅔ scabrid; lower slightly shorter, upper (2.5)-3-4-(5) mm, 3-nerved. Lemma 3-4.5 mm, elliptic-oblong, with short crinkled hairs on lower ½ of midnerve and near base of outer lateral nerves; margins minutely scabrid. Palea 2.5-4 mm, keels finely scabrid, interkeel and flanks smooth or minutely scabrid. Callus with thick tuft of soft crinkled hairs. Rachilla c. 0.5 mm, smooth or minutely, sparsely scabrid; prolongation c. twice as long. Lodicules c. 0.5 mm, occasionally hair-tipped.
Home