Large dense perennial tufts to 50 cm, with flat, spreading, light green leaves overtopping erect panicles, fibres from older sheaths in a tangled mass at plant base; branching intravaginal; leaf-blades persistent. Leaf-sheath greenish brown to dark brown, hyaline, glabrous; ribs prominent. Ligule 4-7.5 mm, deeply and sharply lacerate, glabrous throughout. Leaf-blade (9)-15-30 cm × 3.5-5.5 mm, strongly ribbed, subcoriaceous, flat, abaxially glabrous, obviously keeled, adaxially deeply furrowed, ribs densely, minutely papillose-scabrid; margins and curved tip smooth. Culm 9-25 cm, simple, erect, leafy almost throughout, internodes glabrous. Panicle 5-25 cm, oblong, cylindrical to ± clavate, contracted, with lowermost branches sometimes slightly distant; rachis glabrous, branches erect, short, only slightly spreading, ± papillose, bearing close-set spikelets. Spikelets 4.5-8.5 mm, 2-4-flowered, light green. Glumes unequal, membranous, glabrous; lower 2-3-(3.5) mm, 1-(3)-nerved, very narrow oblong-lanceolate, acute, upper 3-4 mm, 3-nerved, narrow ovate-elliptic, acuminate. Lemma 4.8-6 mm, 5-nerved, oblong-elliptic, narrowed to long-acuminate tip, almost glabrous but nerves and internerves with short scattered hairs near base, and midnerve finely scabrid above hairs. Palea c. 4 mm, very narrow, keels ciliate-scabrid in upper ½. Callus glabrous. Rachilla c. 1 mm, glabrous. Lodicules slightly < 1 mm, rarely hair-tipped. Gynomonoecious: each spikelet with 1-(2) lower flowers ☿, anthers 2-3 mm, gynoecium c. 1.5 mm; upper flowers ♀ with minute colourless anthers 0.2-0.4 mm, on long filaments, gynoecium c. 1.5 mm. Caryopsis c. 1 × 0.5 mm.
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