Culms 60-100 cm tall, stout, 3-angled, several nodose. Leaves shorter than culm; basal sheaths blackish purple, shiny, apex with a distinct tongue; leaf blade usually shorter than culm, 0.5-1.5 m × 1-1.5 cm, flat, stiff, leathery, margin slightly scabrous. Involucral bracts 5 or 6, leaflike, basal 3 or 4 overtopping inflorescence. Inflorescence a large compound or decompound anthela, turbinate with concave center, 7-10 × 8-15 cm; rays 5 or more, to 9 cm, slender, spreading (often in same direction), pubescent. Spikelets sessile, in glomerules of 3-7, globose, 3-8 × 2.5-3.5 mm, many flowered, apex obtuse. Glumes rusty brown (concolorous), densely arranged, ovate to ovate-deltate, 1.8-2 × ca. 0.8 mm, membranous, with 1 pale brown vein, apex attenuate to mucronate and woolly at maturity from exserted bristle tips. Perianth bristles 6, 1.5-2 × as long as nutlet, erect, basally connate, apical half sparsely antrorsely scabrous. Style filiform, 1.2-1.5 mm. Nutlet pale yellowish brown, ellipsoid to obovoid, ca. 1.3 mm, 3-sided, apex subulate beaked. Fl. and fr. probably Jul-Oct.
Home