Plants robust, 0.3–1 m high, forming hummocks and mats to 0.5–2 m wide or rings to 5 m wide, stoloniferous, sometimes with prop-roots, aromatic, usually highly resinous on leaves and sometimes on glumes and panicle axes. Culms often with prop roots. Flowering culms 1–2.5 m high. Leaves mostly glabrous; sheaths fan-shaped, loosely overlapping, lower part to 20 mm wide, auriculate; orifice pubescent or ciliate; blade often curled or recurved, loosely folded or flat, to 60 cm long, 0.5–1.3 (–4.5) mm wide, cartilaginous at base, not pseudopetiolate, usually with short erect or reflexed prickles on margins. Panicles open when young, 18–74 cm long, to 8 cm wide; branches to 7 (–15) cm long, sometimes further divided, flat or triquetrous. Spikelets close together or rarely distant, oblong or lanceolate or obovate, 3–6 mm long, 1–2 mm wide; florets (1–) 3–7, becoming loose, straw-coloured at maturity, the terminal floret much reduced; pedicel 0.5–3.5 mm long. Glumes unequal, entire to 3-toothed, muticous or mucronate on lower glume, cartilaginous, glabrous; lower glume lanceolate, 2.8–5 mm long, usually acuminate, usually 3-nerved; upper glume oblong or lanceolate or ovate-elliptic, 2.3–3.5 mm long, acute or obtuse, usually 1-nerved. Basal lemma lanceolate-elliptic, 2–3.5 mm long, scaberulous or ciliate on margins or body glabrous and smooth, cartilaginous to indurated with margins thinner and narrow, 3-nerved at base, branching to 9-nerved above (in 3 groups of 3); lobes ±equal, 0.2–0.5 (–1) mm long, acute. Palea oblongelliptic, ±equal to lemma body, entire, membranous to cartilaginous, glabrous; keels narrowly winged or wingless. Anthers 1–2 mm long.
Widespread and often the dominant grass in deep or skeletal,sandy soils or yellow earths on rugged, dissected sandstone outcrops; also associatedwith quartzite, basalt, laterite and conglomerates, and on coastal dunes,coastal pindan, salt lakes, in white alluvial sands.
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